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THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE 



AND OTHER PIECES 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 




HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN A.-NU> C0t^l>ANi' 
New York : 85 Fifth Avenue 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 
JUN 23 1904 

^ Cooyrlsrht Entw 

CLASS (XXXo. No. 


•lU 



COPYRIGHT 1S76 BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. 
COPYRIGHT 1904 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



CO'N TENTS. 

Page 

A Scene from the Dolliver Romance . . 9 

Another Scene from the Dolliver Romance . 29 

Another Fragment of the Dolliver Romance . 44 
Sketches from Memory. 

I, The Inland Port 67 

II. Rochester . . . . . . .71 

III. A Night Scene 75 

Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man. 

1 77 

II. My Home Return . . • . . 90 

My Visit to Niagara 97 

The Antique Ring 107 

Graves and Goblins 125 



vi CONTENTS. 

Dr. Bullivant 136 

A Book of Autographs 147 

An Old Woman's Tale 169 

Time's Portraiture. — Address .... 182 

"Browne's Folly" 193 




THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE, 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 



A SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER 
ROMANCE. 




R. DOLLIVER, a worthy personage of extreme 
antiquity, was aroused rather prematurely, one 
summer morning, by the shouts of the child 
Pansie, in an adjoining chamber, summoning old Martha 
(who performed the duties of nurse, housekeeper, and 
kitchen-maid, in the Doctor's establishment) to take up 
her little ladyship and dress her. The old gentleman 
woke with more than his customary alacrity, and, after 
taking a moment to gather his wits about him, pulled 
aside the faded moreen curtains of his ancient bed, and 
thrust his head into a beam of sunshine that caused him 
to wink and withdraw it again. This transitory glimpse 
of good Dr. Dolliver showed a flannel nightcap, fringed 
round with stray locks of silvery white hair, and sur- 
mounting a meagre and duskily yellow visage, which was 
crossed and criss-crossed with a record of his long life 
in wrinkles, faithfully written, no doubt, but with such 
1*" 



10 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

cramped cbirography of Father Time that the purport 
was illegible. It seemed hardly worth while for the pa- 
triarch to get out of bed any more, and bring his forlorn 
shadow into the summer day that was made for younger 
folks. The Doctor, however, was by no means of that 
opinion, being considerably encouraged towards the toil 
of living twenty-four hours longer by the comparative 
ease with which he found himself going through the usu- 
ally painful process of bestirring his rusty joints (stiffened 
by the very rest and sleep that should have made them 
pliable) and putting them in a condition to bear his 
weight upon the floor. Nor was he absolutely disheart- 
ened by the idea of those tonsorial, ablutionary, and 
personally decorative labors which are apt to become 
so intolerably irksome to an old gentleman, after perform- 
ing them daily and daily for fifty, sixty, or seventy years, 
and finding them still as immitigably recurrent as at first. 
Dr. Dolliver could nowise account for this happy condi- 
tion of his spirits and physical energies, until he remem- 
bered taking an experimental sip of a certain cordial 
which was long ago prepared by his grandson, and care- 
fully sealed up in a bottle, and had been reposited in a 
dark closet among a parcel of effete medicines ever since 
that gifted young man's death. 

"It may have wrought effect upon me," thought the 
doctor, shaking his head as he lifted it again from the 
pillow. "It maybe so; for poor Edward oftentimes 
instilled a strange efficacy into his perilous drugs. But 
I will rather believe it to be the operation of God's 
mercy, which may have temporarily invigorated my feeble 
age for little Pansie's sake." 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 11 

A twinge of Lis familiar rheumatism, as he put his foot 
out of bed, taught him that he must not reckon too con- 
fidently upon even a day's respite from the intrusive 
family of aches and infirmities, which, with their prover- 
bial fidelity to attachments once formed, had long been 
the closest acquaintances that the poor old gentleman had 
in the world. Nevertheless, he fancied the twinge a little 
less poignant than those of yesterday; and moreover, 
after stinging him pretty smartly, it passed gradually off 
with a thrill, which, in its latter stages, grew to be almost 
agreeable. Pain is but pleasure too strongly emphasized. 
With cautious movements, and only a groan or two, the 
good Doctor transferred himself from the bed to the floor, 
where he stood awhile, gazing from one piece of quaint 
furniture to another (such as stiff'-backed Mayflower 
chairs, an oaken chest-of-drawers carved cunnmgly witli 
shapes of animals and wreaths of foliage, a table with 
multitudinous legs, a family record in faded embroidery, 
a shelf of black-bound books, a dirty heap of gallipots 
and phials in a dim corner), — gazing at these things, 
and steadying himself by the bedpost, while his inert 
brain, still partially benumbed with sleep, came slowly 
into accordance with the realities about him. The object 
which most helped to bring Dr. Dolliver completely to 
his waking perceptions was one that common observers 
might suppose to have been snatched bodily out of his 
dreams. The same sunbeam that had dazzled the doctor 
between the bed-curtains gleamed on the weather-beaten 
gilding which had once adorned this mysterious symbol, 
and showed it to be an enormous serpent, twining round 
a wooden post, and reaching quite from the floor of the 
chamber to its ceiling. 



12 THE DOLLIVER EOMANCE. 

It was evidently a thing that could boast of consid- 
erable antiquity, the dry-rot having eaten out its eyes and 
gnawed away the tip of its tail ; and it must have stood 
long exposed to the atmosphere, for a kind of gray moss 
had partially overspread its tarnished gilt surface, and a 
swallow, or other familiar little bird, in some bygone 
summer, seemed to have built its nest in the yawning 
and exaggerated mouth. It looked like a kind of Mani- 
chean idol, which might have been elevated on a pedestal 
for a century or so, enjoying the worship of its votaries 
in the open air, until the impious sect perished from 
among men, — all save old Dr. Dolliver, who had set up 
the monster in his bedchamber for the convenience of 
private devotion. But we are unpardonable in suggest- 
ing such a fantasy to the prejudice of our venerable friend, 
knowing him to have been as pious and upright a Chris- 
tian, and with as little of the serpent in his character, as 
ever came of Puritan lineage. Not to make a further 
mystery about a very simple matter, this bedimmed and 
rotten reptile was once the medical emblem or apothe- 
cary's sign of the famous Dr. Swinnerton, who practised 
physic in the earlier days of New England, when a head 
of ^sculapius or Hippocrates would have vexed the souls 
of the righteous as savoring of heathendom. The ancient 
dispenser of drugs had therefore set up an image of the 
Brazen Serpent, and followed his business for many years, 
with great credit, under this Scriptural device ; and Dr. 
Dolliver, being the apprentice, pupil, and humble friend 
of the learned Swinnerton's old age, had inherited the 
symbolic snake, and much other valuable property, by 
his bequest. 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 13 

While the patriarch was putting on his small-clotlies, he 
took care to stand in the parallelogram of bright sunshine 
that fell upon the uucarpeted floor. The summer warmth 
was very genial to his system, and yet made him shiver ; 
his wintry veins rejoiced at it, though the reviving blood 
tingled through them with a half-painful and only half- 
pleasurable titillation. For the first few moments after 
creeping out of bed, he kept his back to the sunny win- 
dow, and seemed mysteriously shy of glancing thither- 
ward ; but, as the June fervor pervaded him more and 
more thoroughly, he turned bravely about, and looked 
forth at a burial-ground on the corner of which he dwelt. 
There lay many an old acquaintance, who had gone to 
sleep with the flavor of Dr. DoUiver's tinctures and pow- 
ders upon his tongue ; it was the patient's final bitter taste 
of this world, and perhaps doomed to be a recollected 
nauseousness in the next. Yesterday, in the chill of his 
forlorn old age, the Doctor expected soon to stretch out 
his weary bones among that quiet community, and might 
scarcely have shrunk from the prospect on his own ac- 
count, except, indeed, that he dreamily mixed up the 
infirmities of his present condition with the repose of the 
approaching one, being haunted by a notion that the 
damp earth, under the grass and dandelions, must needs 
be pernicious for his cough and his rheumatism. But, 
this morning, the cheerful sunbeams, or the mere taste of 
his grandson's cordial that he had taken at bedtime, or 
the fitful vigor that often sports irreverently with aged 
people, had caused an unfrozen drop of youthfulness, 
somewhere within him, to expand. 

" Hem ! ahem ! " quoth the Doctor, hoping with one 



14 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

effort to clear his throat of the dregs of a ten-years' 
cough. " Matters are not so far gone with me as I 
thought. I have known mighty sensible men, when only 
a little age-stricken or otherwise out of sorts, to die of 
mere faint-heartedness, a great deal sooner than they 
need." 

He shook his silvery head at his own image in the 
looking-glass, as if to impress the apothegm on that 
shadowy representative of himself ; and, for his part, he 
determined to pluck up a spirit and live as long as he 
possibly could, if it were only for the sake of little Pansie, 
who stood as close to one extremity of human life as her 
great-grandfather to the other. This child of three years 
old occupied all the unfossilized portion of good Dr. 
Dolliver's heart. Every other interest that he formerly 
had, and the entire confraternity of persons whom he 
once loved, had long ago departed ; and the poor Doc- 
tor could not follow them, because the grasp of Pansie's 
baby-fingers held him back. 

So he crammed a great silver watch into his fob, and 
drew on a patchwork morning-gown of an ancient fashion. 
Its original material was said to have been the embroid- 
ered front of his own wedding-waistcoat and the silken 
skirt of his wife's bridal attire, which his eldest grand- 
daughter had taken from the carved chest-of-drawers, after 
poor Bessie, the beloved of his youth, had been half a cen- 
tury in the grave. Throughout many of the intervening 
years, as the garment got ragged, the spinsters of the old 
man's family had quilted their duty and affection into it 
in the shape of patches upon patches, rose-color, crimson, 
blue, violet, and green, and then (as their hopes faded, and 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. IT^ 

their life kept growing shadier, and their attire took a 
sombre hue) sober gray and great fragments of funereal 
black, until the Doctor could revive the memory of most 
things that had befallen him by looking at his patchwork- 
gown, as it hung upon a chair. And now it was ragged 
again, and all the fingers that should have mended it were 
cold. It had an Eastern fragrance, too, a smell of drugs, 
strong-scented herbs, and spicy gums, gathered from the 
many potent infusions that had from time to time been 
spilt over it ; so that, snuffing him afar off, you might 
have taken Dr. DoUiver for a mummy, and could hardly 
have been undeceived by his shrunken and torpid aspect, 
as he crept nearer. 

Wrapt in his odorous and many-colored robe, he took 
staff in hand, and moved pretty vigorously to the head of 
the staircase. As it was somewhat steep, and but dimly 
lighted, he began cautiously to descend, putting his left 
hand on the banister, and poking down his long stick to 
assist him in making sure of the successive steps ; and 
thus he became a living illustration of the accuracy of 
Scripture, where it describes the aged as being " afraid 
of that which is high," — a truth that is often found to 
have a sadder purport than its external one. Half-way 
to the bottom, however, the Doctor heard the impatient 
and authoritative tones of little Pansie, — Queen Pansie, 
as she might fairly have been styled, in reference to her 
position in the household, — calling amain for grand- 
papa and breakfast. He was startled into such perilous 
activity by the summons, that his heels slid on the stairs, 
the slippers were shuffled off his feet, and he saved him- 
self from a tumble only by quickening his pace, and com- 
ing down at almost a run. 



1.6 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

/' 

; " Mercy on my poor old bones ! *' mentally exclaimed 
the Doctor, fancying himself fractured in fifty places. 
"Some of them are broken, surely, and methinks my 
heart has leaped out of my mouth ! What ! all right ? 
Well, well ! but Providence is kinder to me than I de- 
serve, prancing down this steep staircase like a kid of 
three months old ! " 

He bent stiffly to gather up his slippers and fallen staff; 
and meanwhile Pansie had heard the tumult of her great- 
grandfather's descent, and was pounding against the door 
of the breakfast-room in her haste to come at him. The 
Doctor opened it, and there she stood, a rather pale and 
large-eyed little thing, quaint in her aspect, as might well 
be the case with a motherless child, dwelling in an un- 
cheerful house, with no other playmates than a decrepit 
old man and a kitten, and no better atmosphere within- 
doors than the odor of decayed apothecary's stuff, nor 
gayer neighborhood than that of the adjacent burial- 
ground, where all her relatives, from her great-grand- 
mother downward, lay calling to her, " Pansie, Pansie, it 
is bedtime ! " even in the prime of the summer morning. 
For those dead women-folk, especially her mother and 
the whole row of maiden aunts and grand-aunts, could 
not but be anxious about the child, knowing that little 
Pansie would be far safer under a tuft of dandelions than 
if left alone, as she soon must be, in this difficult and 
deceitful world. 

Yet, in spite of the lack of damask roses in her cheeks^ 
she seemed a healthy child, and certainly showed great 
capacity of energetic movement in the impulsive capers 
with which she welcomed her venerable progenitor. She 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 17 

shouted out her satisfaction, moreover (as her custom 
was, having never had any over-sensitive auditors about 
her to tame down her voice), till even the Doctor's dull 
ears were full of the clamor. 

"Pansie, darling," said Dr. Dolliver, cheerily, patting 
her brown hair with his tremulous fingers, " thou hast 
put some of thine own friskiness into poor old grand- 
father, this fine morning ! Dost know, child, that he 
came near breaking his neck down-stairs at the sound of 
thy vdice ? What wouldst thou have done then, little 
Pansie ? " 

" Kiss poor grandpapa and make him well ! " answered 
the child, remembering the Doctor's own mode of cure in 
similar mishaps to herself. " It shall do poor grand- 
papa good ! " she added, putting up her mouth to apply 
the remedy. 

" Ah, little one, thou hast greater faith in thy medi- 
cines than ever I had in my drugs," replied the patriarch, 
with a giggle, surprised and delighted at his own readi- 
ness of response. " But the kiss is good for my feeble 
old heart, Pansie, though it might do little to mend 
a broken neck ; so give grandpapa another dose, and let 
us to breakfast." 

In this merry humor they sat down to the table, great- 
grandpapa and Pansie side by side, and the kitten, as 
soon appeared, making a third in the party. Pirst, she 
showed her mottled head out of Pansie's lap, delicately 
sipping milk from the child's basin without rebuke ; then 
she took post on the old gentleman's shoulder, purring 
like a spinning-wheel, trying her claws in the wadding of 
his dressing-gown, and still more impressively reminding 



18 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

him of her presence by puttin*^ out a paw to intercept 
a warmed-over morsel of yesterday's cliicken on its way 
to the Doctor's mouth. After skilfully achieving this 
feat, she scrambled down upon the breakfast-table and 
began to wash her face and hands. Evidently, these 
companions were all three on intimate terms, as was nat- 
ural en'ougli, since a great many childish impulses were 
softly creeping back on the simple-minded old man ; inso- 
much that, if no worldly necessities nor painful infirmity 
had disturbed him, his remnant of life might have been 
as cheaply and cheerily enjoyed as the early playtime of 
the kitten and the child. Old Dr. Dolliver and his great- 
granddaughter (a ponderous title, which seemed quite to 
overwhelm the tiny figure of Pansie) had met one another 
at the two extremities of the life-circle : her sunrise 
served him for a sunset, illuminating his locks of silver 
and hers of golden brown with a homogeneous shimmer 
of twinkling light. 

Little Pansie was the one earthly creature that inher- 
ited a drop of the Dolliver blood. The Doctor's only 
child, poor Bessie's offspring, had died the better part of 
a hundred years before, and his grandchildren, a numer- 
ous and dimly remembered brood, had vanished along his 
weary track in their youth, maturity, or incipient age, 
till, hardly knowing how it had all happened, he found 
himself tottering onward with an infant's small fingers in 
his nerveless grasp. So mistily did his dead progeny 
come and go in the patriarch's decayed recollection, that 
this solitary child represented for him the successive 
babyhoods of the many that had gone before. The emo- 
tions of his early paternity came back to him. She 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 19 

seemed the baby of a past age oftener tlian she seemed 
Pansie. A whole family of grand-aunts (one of whom 
had perished iu her cradle, never so mature as Pansie 
now, another in her virgin bloom, another in autumnal 
maidenhood, yellow and shrivelled, with vinegar in her 
blood, and still another, a forlorn widow, whose grief 
outlasted even its vitality, and grew to be merely a tor- 
pid habit, and was saddest then), — all their hitherto 
forgotten features peeped through the face of the great- 
grandchild, and their long-inaudible voices sobbed, 
shouted, or laughed, in her familiar tones. But it often 
happened to Dr. Dolliver, while frolicking amid this 
throng of ghosts, where the one reality looked no more 
vivid than its shadowy sisters, — it often happened that 
his eyes filled with tears at a sudden perception of what 
a sad and poverty-stricken old man he was, already re^ 
mote from his own generation, and bound to stray furthel 
onward as the sole playmate and protector of a child ! 

As Dr. Dolliver, in spite of his advanced epoch of life, 
is likely to remain a considerable time longer upon out 
hands, we deem it expedient to give a brief sketch of his 
position, in order that the story may get onward with 
the greater freedom when he rises from the breakfast- 
table. Deeming it a matter of courtesy, we have allowed 
him the honorary title of Doctor, as did all his towns- 
people and contemporaries, except, perhaps, one or two 
formal old physicians, stingy of civil phrases and over- 
jealous of their own professional dignity. Nevertheless, 
these crusty graduates were technically right in exclud- 
ing Dr. Dolliver from their fraternity. He had never 
received the degree of any medical school, nor (save it 



20 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

might be for the cure of a toothache, or a child's rashj 
or a whitlow on a seamstress's finger, or some such 
trifling malady) had he ever been even a practitioner of 
the awful science with which his popular designation con- 
nected him. Our old friend, in short, even at his highest 
social elevation, claimed to be nothing more than an 
apothecary, and, in these later and far less prosperous 
days, scarcely so much. Since the death of liis last 
surviving grandson (Pansie's father, whom he had in- 
structed in all the mysteries of his science, and who, being 
distinguished by an experimental and inventive tendency, 
was generally believed to have poisoned himself with an 
infallible panacea of his own distillation), — since that 
final bereavement. Dr. Dolliver's once pretty flourishing 
business had lamentably declined. After a few months 
of unavailing struggle, he found it expedient to take 
down the Brazen Serpent from the position to which Dr. 
Swinnerton had originally elevated it, in front of his 
shop in the main street, and to retire to his private 
dwelling, situated in a by-lane and on the edge of a 
burial-ground. 

This house, as well as the Brazen Serpent, some old 
medical books, and a drawer full of manuscripts, liad 
come to him by the legacy of Dr. Swinnerton. The 
dreariness of the locality had been of small importance 
to our friend in his young manhood, when he first led 
his fair wife over the threshold, and so long as neither of 
them had any kinship with the human dust that rose into 
httle hillocks, and still kept accumulating beneath their 
window. But, too soon afterwards, wlien poor Bessie 
herself had gone early to rest there, it is probable that 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 21 

an influence from lier grave may have prematurely 
calmed and depressed her widowed husband, taking 
away much of the energy from what should have been 
the most active portion of his life. Thus he never grew 
rich. His thrifty townsmen used to tell him, that, in 
any other man's hands. Dr. Swinnerton's Brazen Serpent 
(meaning, I presume, the inherited credit and good-will 
of that old worthy's trade) would need but ten years' 
time to transmute its brass into gold. In Dr. Dolliver's 
keeping, as we have seen, the inauspicious symbol lost 
the greater part of what superficial gilding it originally 
had. Matters had not mended with him in more ad- 
vanced life, after he had deposited a further and further 
portion of his heart and its affections in each successive 
one of a long row of kindred graves ; and as he stood 
over the last of them, holding Pansie by the hand and 
looking down upon the coffin of his grandson, it is no 
wonder that the old man wept, partly for those gone be- 
fore, but not so bitterly as for the little one that stayed 
behind. Why had not God taken her with the rest ? 
And then, so hopeless as he was, so destitute of possibili- 
ties of good, his weary frame, his decrepit bones, his 
dried-up heart, might have crumbled into dust at once, 
and have been scattered by the next wind over all the 
heaps of earth that were akin to him. 

This intensity of desolation, however, was of too posi- 
tive a character to be long sustained by a person of Dr. 
Dolliver's original gentleness and simplicity, and now so 
completely tamed by age and misfortune. Even before 
he turned away from the grave, he grew conscious of a 
slightly cheering and invigorating eifect from the tight 



22 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

grasp of the child's warm little hand. Feeble as he was, 
she seemed to adopt him willingly for her protector. 
And the Doctor never afterwards shrank from his duty 
nor quailed beneath it, but bore himself like a man, 
striving, amid the sloth of age and the breaking-up of 
intellect, to earn the competency which he had failed to 
accumulate even in his most vigorous days. 

To the extent of securing a present subsistence for 
Pansie and himself, he was successful. After his son's 
death, when the Brazen Serpent fell into popular disre- 
pute, a small share of tenacious patronage followed the 
old man into his retirement. In his prime, he had been 
allowed to possess more skill than usually fell to the 
share of a Colonial apothecary, having been regularly 
apprenticed to Dr. Swinnerton, who, throughout his long 
practice, was accustomed personally to concoct the medi- 
cines which he prescribed and dispensed. It was believed, 
indeed, that the ancient physician had learned the art 
at the world-famous drug-manufactory of Apothecary's 
Hall, in London, and, as some people half-malignly whis- 
pered, had perfected himself under masters more subtle 
than were to be found even there. Unquestionably, in 
many critical cases he was known to have employed reme- 
dies of mysterious composition and dangerous potency, 
which in less skilful hands would have been more likely 
to kill than cure. He would willingly, it is said, have 
taught his apprentice the secrets of these prescriptions, 
but the latter, being of a timid character and delicate 
conscience, had shrunk from acquaintance with them. 
It was probably as the result of the same scrupulosity 
that Dr. Dolliver had always declined to enter the" medi- 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 23 

cal profession, in which his old instructor had set him 
such heroic examples of adventurous dealing with mat- 
ters of life and death. Nevertheless, the aromatic fra- 
grance, so to speak, of the learned Swinnerton's reputa- 
tion, had clung to our friend through life; and there 
were elaborate preparations in the pharmacopoeia of that 
day, requiring such minute skill and conscientious fidel- 
ity in the concocter that the physicians were still glad 
to confide them to one in whom these qualities were so 
evident. 

Moreover, the grandmothers of the community were 
kind to him, and mindful of his perfumes, his rose-water, 
his cosmetics, tooth-powders, pomanders, and pomades, 
the scented memory of which lingered about their toilet- 
tables, or came faintly back from the days when they 
were beautiful. Among this class of customers there 
was still a demand for certain comfortable little nos- 
trums (delicately sweet and pungent to the taste, cheer- 
ing to the spirits, and fragrant in the breath), the proper 
distillation of which was the airiest secret that the mystic 
Swinnerton had left behind him. And, besides, these 
old ladies had always liked the manners of Dr. Dolliver, 
and used to speak of his gentle courtesy behind the 
counter as having positively been something to admire ; 
though, of later years, an unrefined, and almost rustic 
simplicity, such as belonged to his humble ancestors, 
appeared to have taken possession of him, as it often 
does of prettily mannered men in their late decay. 

But it resulted from all these favorable circumstances 
that the Doctor's marble mortar, though worn with long 
service and considerably damaged by a crack that per- 



24 THE DOLLTVER ROMANCE. 

vaded it, continued to keep up an occasional intimacy 
with the pestle ; and he still weighed drachms and scru- 
ples in his delicate scales, though it seemed impossible, 
dealing with such minute quantities, that his tremulous 
fingers should not put in too little or too much, leaving 
out life with the deficiency or spilling in death with the 
surplus. To say the truth, his stanchest friends were 
beginning to think that Dr. Dolliver's fits of absence 
(when his mind appeared absolutely to depart from him, 
while his frail old body worked on mechanically) ren- 
dered him not quite trustworthy without a close super- 
vision of his proceedings. It was impossible, however, 
to convince the aged apothecary of the necessity for such 
vigilance ; and if anything could stir up his gentle tem- 
per to wrath, or, as oftener happened, to tears, it was 
the attempt (which he was marvellously quick to detect) 
thus to interfere with his long-familiar business. 

The public, meanwhile, ceasing to regard Dr. Dolliver 
in his professional aspect, had begun to take an interest 
in him as perhaps their oldest fellow-citizen. It was he 
that remembered the Great Fire and the Great Snow, 
and that had been a grown-up stripling at the terrible 
epoch of Witch-Times, and a child just breeclied at the 
breaking out of King Philip's Indian War. He, too, in 
liis- school-boy days, had received a benediction from the 
patriarchal Governor Bradstreet, and thus could boast 
(somewhat as Bishops do of their unbroken succession 
from the Apostles) of a transmitted blessing from the 
whole company of sainted Pilgrims among whom the 
venerable magistrate had been an honored companion. 
Viewing tlieir townsman in this aspect, tlie people re- 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 25 

voked the courteous Doctorate with which they had 
heretofore decorated liim, and uow knew him most 
familiarly as Grandsir DoUiver. His white head, his 
Puritan band, his threadbare garb (the fashion of which 
he had ceased to change, half a century ago), his gold- 
headed staff, that had .been Dr. Swinnerton's, his 
shrunken, frosty figure, and its feeble movement, — all 
these characteristics had a wholeness and permanence 
in the public recognition, like the meeting-house steeple 
or the town-pump. All the younger portion of the in- 
habitants unconsciously ascribed a sort of aged immor- 
tality to Grandsir Dolliver's infirm and reverend pres- 
ence. They fancied that he had been born old (at least, 
I remember entertaining some such notions about age- 
stricken people, when I myself was young), and that 
he could the better tolerate his aches and incommodities, 
his dull ears and dim eyes, his remoteness from human 
intercourse within the crust of indurated years, the cold 
temperature that kept him always shivering and sad, 
the heavy burden that invisibly bent down his shoulders, 
— that all these intolerable things might bring a kind 
of enjoyment to Grandsir Dolliver, as the lifelong con- 
ditions of his peculiar existence. 

But, alas ! it was a terrible mistake. This weight of 
years had a perennial novelty for the poor sufferer. He 
never grew accustomed to it, but, long as he had now 
borne the fretful torpor of his waning life, and patient as 
he seemed, he still retained an inward consciousness that 
these stiffened shoulders, these quailing knees, this cloudi- 
ness of sight and brain, this confused forgetfulness of men 
and affairs, were ti'oublesome accidents that did not really 
2 



26 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

belong to bim. He possibly cherished a half-recognized 
idea that they might pass away. Youth, however eclipsed 
for a season, is undoubtedly the proper, permanent, and 
genuine condition of man ; and if we look closely into this 
dreary delusion of growing old, we shall find that it never 
absolutely succeeds in laying hold of our innermost con- 
victions. A sombre garment, woven of life's unrealities, 
has muffled us from our true self, but within it smiles 
the young man whom we knew ; the ashes of many per- 
ishable things have fallen upon our youthful fire, but 
beneath them lurk the seeds of inextinguishable flame. 
So powerful is this instinctive faith, that men of simple 
modes of character are prone to antedate its consumma- 
tion. And thus it happened with poor Grandsir Dolli- 
ver, who often awoke from an old man's fitful sleep with 
a sense that his senile predicament was but a dream of 
the past night ; and hobbling hastily across the cold 
floor to the looking-gla«s, he would be grievously dis- 
appointed at beholding the white hair, the wrinkles and 
furrows, the ashen visage and bent form, the melancholy 
mask of Age, in which, as he now remembered, some 
strange and sad enchantment had involved him for years 
gone by ! 

To other eyes than his own, however, the shrivelled 
old gentleman looked as if there were little hope of his 
throwing off this too artfully wrought disguise, until, at 
no distant day, his stooping figure should be straight- 
ened out, his hoary locks be smoothed over his brows, 
and his much-enduring bones be laid safely away, with 
a green coverlet spread over them, beside his Bessie, who 
doubtless would recognize her youthful companion in 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 27 

spite of liis ugly garniture of decay. He longed to be 
gazed at by the loving eyes now closed ; he shrank from 
the hard stare of them that loved him not. Walk- 
ing the streets seldom and reluctantly, he felt a dreary 
impulse to elude the people's observation, as if with 
a sense that he had gone irrevocably out of fashion, 
and broken his connecting links with the network of 
liuman life ; or else it was that nightmare-feeling which 
we sometimes have in dreams, when we seem to find 
ourselves wandering through a crowded avenue, with the 
noonday sun upon us, in some wild extravagance of dress 
or nudity. He was conscious of estrangement from his 
townspeople, but did not always know how nor where- 
fore, nor why he should be thus groping through the 
twilight mist in solitude. If they spoke loudly to him, 
with cheery voices, the greeting translated itself faintly 
and mournfully to his ears ; if they shook him by the 
hand, it was as if a thick, insensible glove absorbed the 
kindly pressure and the warmth. When little Pansie 
was the companion of his walk, her childish gayety and 
freedom did not avail to bring him into closer relation- 
ship with men, but seemed to follow him into that region 
of indefinable remoteness, that dismal Fairy -Land of aged 
fancy, into which old Grandsir Dolliver had so strangely 
crept away. 

Yet there were moments, as many persons had noticed, 
when the great-grandpapa would suddenly take stronger 
hues of Hfe. It was as if his faded figure had been col- 
ored over anew, or at least, as he and Pansie moved 
along the street, as if a sunbeam had fallen across him, 
instead of the gray gloom of an instant before. His 



28 THE DOLLIVER llOMANCE. 

chilled sensibilities had probably been touched and quick- 
ened by the warm contiguity of his little companion 
through the medium of her hand, as it stirred within his 
own, or some inflection of her voice that set his memory 
ringing and chiming with forgotten sounds. While that 
music lasted, the old man was alive and happy. And tiiere 
were seasons, it might be, liappier than even these, when 
Pansie had been kissed and put to bed, and Grandsir 
Dolliver sat by his fireside gazing in among the massive 
coals, and absorbing their glow into those cavernous 
abysses with which all men communicate. Hence come 
angels or fiends into our twilight musings, according as 
we may have peopled them in bygone years. Over our 
friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire-gleam, stole 
an expression of repose and perfect trust that made him 
as beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the 
child Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits 
that were watching him beheld a calm surprise draw 
slowly over his features and brighten into joy, yet not 
so vividly as to break his evening quietude. The gate 
of heaven had been kindly left ajar, that this forlorn old 
creature might catch a glimpse within. All the night 
afterwards, he would be semi-conscious of an intangible 
bliss diffused through the fitful lapses of an old man's 
slumber, and would awake, at early dawn, with a fahit 
thrilling of the heart-strings, as if there had been music 
just now wandering over them. 



ANOTHER SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER 
ROMANCE.* 




E may now suppose Grandsir Dolliver to have 
finished his breakfast, with a better appetite 
and sharper perception of the qualities of his 
food than he has generally felt of late years, whether it 
were due to old Martha's cookery or to the cordial of 
the night before. Little Pansie had also made an end 
of her bread and milk with entire satisfaction, and after- 
wards nibbled a crust, greatly enjoying its resistance to 
her little white teeth. 

How this child came by the odd name of Pansie, and 
whether it was really her baptismal name, I have not 
ascertained. More probably it was one of those pet 
appellations that grow out of a child's character, or out 
of some keen thrill of affection in the parents, an un- 
sought-for and unconscious felicity, a kind of revelation, 
teaching them the true name by which the child's guar- 
dian angel would know it, — a name with playfulness 
and love in it, that we often observe to supersede, in 
the practice of those who love the child best, the name 
that they carefully selected, and caused the clergyman to 

* This scene was not revised by the author, but is printed 
from his first draught. 



30 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

plaster indelibly on the poor little forehead at the font, 
— the love-name, whereby, if the child lives, the parents 
know it in their hearts, or by which, if it dies, God 
seems to have called it away, leaving the sound lingering 
faintly and sweetly through the house. In Pansie's case, 
it may have been a certain pehsiveness which was some- 
times seen under her childish frolic, and so translated 
itself into French (pensee), her mother having been of 
Acadian kin ; or, quite as probably, it alluded merely to 
the color of her eyes, which, in some lights, were very 
like the dark petals of a tuft of pansies in the Doctor's 
garden. It might well be, indeed, on account of the 
suggested pensiveness; for the child's gayety had no 
example to sustain it, no sympathy of other children or 
grown people, — and her melancholy, had it been so 
dark a feeling, was but the shadow of the house and of 
the old man. If brighter sunshine came, she would 
brighten with it. This morning, surely, as the three com- 
panions, Pansie, puss, and Grandsir Dolliver, emerged 
from the shadow of the house into the small adjoining 
enclosure, they seemed all frolicksome alike. 

The Doctor, however, was intent over something that 
had reference to his lifelong business of drugs. This 
little spot was the place where he was wont to cultivate 
a variety of herbs supposed to be endowed with medici- 
nal virtue. Some of them had been long known in the 
pharmacopoeia of the Old World; and others, in the 
early days of the country, had been adopted by the first 
settlers from the Indian medicine-men, though with fear 
and even contrition, because these wild doctors were 
supposed to draw their pharmaceutic knowledge from 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 31 

no gracious source, tlie Black Man himself being the 
principal professor in their medical school. Erom his 
own experience, however. Dr. Dolliver had long since 
doubted, though he was not bold enough quite to come 
to the conclusion, that Indian shrubs, and the remedies 
prepared from them, were much less perilous than those 
so freely used in European practice, and singularly apt 
to be followed by results quite as propitious. Into such 
heterodoxy our friend was the more liable to fall because 
it had been taught him early in life by his old master, 
Dr. Swinnerton, who, at those not infrequent times when 
he indulged a certain unhappy predilection for strong 
waters, had been accustomed to inveigh in terms of the 
most cynical contempt and coarsest ridicule against the 
practice by which he lived, and, as he affirmed, inflicted 
death on his fellow-men. Our old apothecary, though 
too loyal to the learned profession with which he was 
connected fully to believe this bitter judgment, even 
when pronounced by his revered master, was still so far 
influenced that his conscience was possibly a little easier 
when making a preparation from forest herbs and roots 
than in the concoction of half a score of nauseous poi- 
sons into a single elaborate drug, as the fashion of that 
day was. 

But there were shrubs in the garden of which he had 
never ventured to make a medical use, nor, indeed, did 
he know their virtue, although from year to year he had 
tended and fertilized, weeded and pruned them, with 
something like religious care. They were of the rarest 
character, and had been planted by the learned and 
famous Dr. Swinnerton, who on his death-bed, when he 



32 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

left his dwelling and all his abstruse manuscripts to his 
favorite pupil, had particularly directed his attention to 
this row of shrubs. They had been collected by himself 
from remote countries, and had the poignancy of torrid 
climes in them ; and he told him, that, properly used, 
they would be worth all the rest of the legacy a hun- 
dred-fold. As the apothecary, however, found the manu- 
scriptSj in which he conjectured there was a treatise on 
the subject of these shrubs, mostly illegible, and quite 
beyond his comprehension in such passages as he suc- 
ceeded in puzzling out (partly, perhaps, owing to his 
very imperfect knowledge of Latin, in which language 
they were written), he had never derived from them any 
of the promised benefit. And to say the truth, remem- 
bering that Dr. Swinnerton himself never appeared to 
triturate or decoct or do anything else with the myste- 
rious herbs, our old friend was inclined to imagine the 
weighty commendation of their virtues to have been the 
idly solemn utterance of mental aoerration at the hour 
of death. So, with the integrity that belonged to his 
character, he had nurtured them as tenderly as was pos- 
sible in the ungenial climate and soil of New England, 
putting some of them into pots for the winter ; but the^ 
had rather dwindled than flourished, and he had reaped 
no harvests from them, nor observed them with any de- 
gree of scientific interest. 

His grandson, however, while yet a school-boy, had 
listened to the old man's legend of the miraculous vir- 
tues of these plants ; and it took so firm a hold of his 
mind, that the row of outlandish vegetables seemed 
rooted in it, and certainly flourished there with richer 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 33 

luxuriance than in the soil where they actually grew. 
The story, acting thus early upon his imagination, may 
be said to have influenced his brief career in life, and, 
perchance, brought about its early close. The young 
man, in the opinion of competent judges, was endowed 
with remarkable abilities, and according to the rumor of 
the people had wonderful gifts, which were proved by 
the cures he had wrought with remedies of his own in- 
vention. His talents lay in the direction of scientific 
analysis and inventive combination of chemical powers. 
While under the pupilage of his grandfather, his progress 
had rapidly gone quite beyond his instructor's hope, — 
leaving him even to tremble at the audacity with which 
he overturned and invented theories, and to wonder at 
the depth at which he wrought beneath the superficial- 
ness and mock-mystery of the medical science of those 
days, like a miner sinking his shaft and running a hid- 
eous peril of the earth caving in above him. Especially 
did he devote himself to these plants ; and under his 
care they had thriven beyond all former precedent, burst- 
ing into luxuriance of bloom, and most of them bearing 
beautiful flowers, which, however, in two or three in- 
stances, had the sort of natural repulsiveness that the 
serpent has in its beauty, compelled against its will, as 
it were, to warn the beholder of an unrevealed danger. 
The young man had long ago, it must be added, de- 
manded of his grandfather the documents included in 
the legacy of Professor Swinnerton, and had spent days 
and nights upon them, growing pale over their mystic 
lore, which seemed the fruit not merely of the Profes- 
sor's own labors, but of those of more ancient sages than 
2* c 



34 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

he ; and often a whole volume seemed to be compressed 
within the limits of a few lines of crabbed manuscript, 
judging from the time which it cost even the quick- 
minded student to decipher them. 

Meantime these abstruse investigations had not wrought 
such disastrous effects as might have been feared, in caus- 
ing Edward Dolliver to neglect the humble trade, the 
conduct of which his grandfather had now relinquished 
almost entirely into his hands. On the contrary, with 
the mere side results of his study, or what may be called 
the chips and shavings of his real work, he created a 
prosperity quite beyond anything that his simple-ramded 
predecessor had ever hoped for, even at the most san- 
guine epoch of his life. The young man's adventurous 
endowments were miraculously alive, and connecting 
themselves with his remarkable ability for solid research, 
and perhaps his conscience being as yet imperfectly de- 
veloped (as it sometimes lies dormant in the young), he 
spared not to produce compounds which, if the names 
were anywise to be trusted, would supersede all other 
remedies, and speedily render any medicine a needless 
thing, making the trade of apothecary an untenable one, 
and the title of Doctor obsolete. Whether there was 
real efficacy in these nostrums, and whether their author 
himself had faith in them, is more than can safely be 
said ; but at all events, the public believed in them, and 
thronged to the old and dim sign of the Brazen Serpent, 
which, though hitherto familiar to them and their fore- 
fathers, now seemed to shine with auspicious lustre, as 
if its old Scriptural virtues were renewed. If any faith 
was to be put iu human testimony, many marvellous 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 35 

cures were really performed, the fame of M^hicli spread 
far and wide, aud caused demands for these medicines 
to come in from places far beyond the precincts of the 
little town. Our old apothecary, now degraded by the 
overshadowing influence of his grandson's character to 
a position not much above that of a shop-boy, stood be- 
hind the counter with a face sad and distrustful, and yet 
with an odd kind of fitful excitement in it, as if he would 
have liked to enjoy this new prosperity, had he dared. 
Then his venerable figure was to be seen dispensing these 
questionable compounds by the single bottle and by the 
dozen, wronging his simple conscience as he dealt out 
what he feared was trash or worse, shrinking from the 
reproachful eyes of every ancient physician who might 
chance to be passing by, but withal examining closely 
the silver or the New England coarsely printed bills 
which he took in payment, as if apprehensive that the 
delusive character of the commodity which he sold might 
be balanced by equal counterfeiting in the money re- 
ceived, or as if his faith in all things were shaken. 

Is it not possible that this gifted young man had in- 
deed found out those remedies which Nature has pro- 
vided and laid away for the cure of every ill ? 

The disastrous termination of the most brilliant epoch 
that ever came to the Brazen Serpent must be told in a 
few words. One night, Edward Dolliver's young wife 
awoke, and, seeing the gray dawn creeping into the 
chamber, while her husband, it should seem, was still 
engaged in his laboratory, arose in her night-dress, and 
went to the door of the room to put in her gentle re- 
monstrance against such labor. There she found him 



36 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

dead, — sunk down out of his cLair upon the hearth, 
where were some ashes, apparently of burnt manuscripts, 
which appeared to comprise most of those included in 
Dr. Swinnerton's legacy, though one or two had fallen 
near the heap, and lay merely scorched beside it. It 
seemed as if he had thrown them into the fire, under a 
sudden impulse, in a great hurry and passion. It may 
be that he had come to the perception of something 
fatally false and deceptive in the successes which he had 
appeared to win, and was too proud and too conscien- 
tious to survive it. Doctors were called in, but had no 
power to revive him. An inquest was held, at which 
the jury, under the instruction, perhaps, of those same 
revengeful doctors, expressed the opinion that the poor 
young man, being given to strange contrivances with 
poisonous drugs, had died by incautiously tasting them 
himself. This verdict, and the terrible event itself, at 
once deprived the medicines of all their popularity ; and 
the poor old apothecary was no longer under any ne- 
cessity of disturbing his conscience by selling them. 
They at once lost their repute, and ceased to be in any 
demand. In the few instances in which they were tried 
the experiment was followed by no good results; and 
even those individuals who had fancied themselves cured, 
and had been loudest in spreading the praises of these 
beneficent compounds, now, as if for the utter demolition 
of the poor youth's credit, suffered under a recurrence 
of the worst symptoms, and, in more than one case, per- 
ished miserably : insomuch (for the days of witchcraft 
were still within the memory of living men and women) 
it was the general opinion that Satan had been person- 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 37 

ally concerned in this affliction, and that the Brazen Ser- 
pent, so long honored among them, was really the type 
of his subtle malevolence and perfect iniquity. It was 
rumored even that all preparations that came from the 
shop were harmful, — that teeth decayed that had been 
made pearly white by the use of the young chemist's 
dentifrice, — that cheeks were freckled that had been 
changed to damask roses by his cosmetics, — that hair 
turned gray or fell off that had become black, glossy, 
and luxuriant from the application of his mixtures, — 
that breath which his drugs had sweetened had now a 
sulphurous smell. Moreover, all the money heretofore 
amassed by the sale of them had been exhausted by Ed- 
ward Dolliver in his lavish expenditure for the processes 
of his study; and nothing was left for Pansie, except 
a few valueless and unsalable bottles of medicine, and 
one or two others, perhaps more recondite than their in- 
ventor had seen fit to offer to the public. Little Pan- 
sie's mother lived but a short time after the shock of the 
terrible catastrophe; and, as we began our story with 
saying, she was left with no better guardianship or sup- 
port than might be found in the efforts of a long super- 
annuated man. 

Nothing short of the simplicity, integrity, and piety 
of Grandsir Dolliver's character, known and acknowl- 
edged as far back as the oldest inhabitants remembered 
anything, and inevitably discoverable by the dullest and 
most prejudiced observers, in all its natural manifesta- 
tions, could have protected him in still creeping about 
the streets. So far as he was personally concerned, 
however, all bitterness and suspicion had speedily passed 



38 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

away ; and there remained still the careless and neglect- 
ful good-will, and the prescriptive reverence, not alto- 
gether reverential, which the world heedlessly awards to 
the unfortunate individual who outlives his generation. 

And now that we have shown the reader sufficiently, 
or at least to the best of our knowledge, and perhaps 
at tedious length, what was the present position of 
Grandsir Dolliver, we may let our story pass onward, 
though at such a pace as suits the feeble gait of an 
old man. 

The peculiarly brisk sensation of this morning, to 
which we have more than once alluded, enabled the 
Doctor to toil pretty vigorously at his medicinal herbs, 
— his catnip, his vervain, and the like ; but he did not 
turn his attention to the row of mystic plants, with 
which so much of trouble and sorrow either was, or 
appeared to be, connected. In truth, his old soul was 
sick of them, and their very fragrance, which the warm 
sunshine made strongly perceptible, was odious to his 
nostrils. But the spicy, homelike scent of his other 
herbs, the English simples, was grateful to him, and so 
was the earth-smell, as he turned up the soil about their 
roots, and eagerly snuffed it in. Little Pansie, on the 
other hand, perhaps scandaUzed at great-grandpapa's 
neglect of the prettiest plants in his garden, resolved 
to do her small utmost towards balancing his injustice ; 
so, with an old shingle, fallen from the roof, which she 
had appropriated as her agricultural tool, she began to 
dig aboat them, pulling up the weeds, as she saw grand- 
papa doing. The kitten, too, with a look of elfish sa- 
gacity, lent her assistance, plying her paws with vast haste 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 39 

%nd efficiency at the roots of one of the shrubs. This 
particular one was much smaller than the rest, perhaps 
because it was a native of the torrid zone, and required 
greater care than the others to make it flourish ; so that, 
shrivelled, cankered, and scarcely showing a green leaf, 
both Pansie and the kitten probably mistook it for a 
Weed. After their joint efforts had made a pretty big 
trench about it, the little girl seized the shrub with both 
hands, bestriding it with her plump little legs, and giv- 
ing so vigorous a pull, that, long accustomed to be trans- 
planted annually, it came up by the roots, and little 
Pansie came down in a sitting posture, making a broad 
impress on the soft earth. " See, see, Doctor ! " cries 
Pansie, comically enough giving him his title of cour- 
tesy, — " look, grandpapa, the big, naughty weed ! " 

Now the Doctor had at once a peculiar dread and a 
peculiar value for this identical shrub, both because his 
grandson's investigations had been applied more ardently 
to it than to all the rest, and because it was associated 
in his mind with an ancient and sad recollection. Por 
he had never forgotten that his wife, the early lost, had 
once taken a fancy to wear its flowers, day after day, 
through the whole season of their bloom, in her bosom, 
where they glowed like a gem, and deepened her some- 
what pallid beauty with a richness never before seen in 
it. At least such was the effect which this tropical 
flower imparted to the beloved form in his memory, and 
thus it somehow both brightened and w'ronged her. This 
had happened not long before her death ; and whenever, 
in, the subsequent years, this plant had brought its an- 
nual flower, it had proved a kind of talisman to bring 



40 THE DOLLIVEU ROMANCE. 

up the image of Bessie, radiant with this glow that did 
not really belong to her naturally passive beauty, quickly 
interchanging with another image of her form, with the 
snow of death on cheek and forehead. This reminiscence 
had remained among the things of which the Doctor was 
always conscious, but had never breathed a word, through 
the whole of his long life, — a sprig of sensibility tliat 
perhaps helped to keep him tenderer and purer than 
other men, who entertain no such follies. And the sight 
of the shrub often brought back the faint, golden gleam 
of her hair, as if her spirit were in the sunlights of the 
garden, quivering into view and out of it. And there- 
fore, when he saw what Pansie bad done, he sent forth 
a strange, inarticulate, hoarse, tremulous exclamation, 
a sort of aged and decrepit cry of mingled emotion. 
" Naughty Pansie, to pull up grandpapa's flower ! " said 
he, as soon as he could speak. " Poison, Pansie, poison ! 
Pling it away, child ! " 

And dropping his spade, the old gentleman scrambled 
towards the little girl as quickly as his rusty joints would 
let him, — while Pansie, as apprehensive and quick of 
motion as a fawn, started up with a shriek of mirth and 
fear to escape him. It so happened that the garden- 
gate was ajar ; and a puff of wind blowing it wide open, 
she escaped through this fortuitous avenue, followed by 
great-grandpapa and the kitten. 

" Stop, naughty Pansie, stop ! " shouted our old 
friend. " You will tumble into the grave ! " The kit- 
ten, with the singular sensitiveness tliat seems to affect it 
at every kind of excitement, was now on her back. 

And, indeed, this portentous warning was better 



THE DOLLIVER UOMANCE. 41 

grounded and had a more literal meaning than might be 
supposed ; for the swinging gate communicated with the 
burial-ground, and almost directly in little Pausie's track 
there was a newly dug grave, ready to receive its tenant 
that afternoon. Pansie, however, fled onward with out- 
stretched arms, half in fear, half in fun, plying her round 
little legs with wonderful promptitude, as if to escape 
Time or Death, in the person of Grandsir Dolliver, and 
happily avoiding the ominous pitfall that lies in every 
person's path, till, hearing a groan from her pursuer, she 
looked over her shoulder, and saw that poor grandpapa 
had stumbled over one of the many hillocks. She then 
suddenly wrinkled up her little visage, and sent forth a 
full-breathed roar of sympathy and alarm. 

" Grandpapa has broken his neck now ! " cried little 
Pansie, amid her sobs. 

" Kiss grandpapa, and make it well, then," said the 
old gentleman, recollecting her remedy, and scrambling 
up more readily than could be expected. " Well," he 
murmured to himself, " a hair's-breadth more, and I 
should have been tumbled into yonder grave. Poor 
little Pansie ! what wouldst thou have done then ? " 

"Make the grass grow over grandpapa," answered 
Pansie, laughing up in his face. 

"Poh, poh, child, that is not a pretty thing to say," 
said grandpapa, pettishly and disappointed, as people are 
apt to be when they try to calculate on the fitful sym- 
pathies of childhood. "Come, you must go in to old 
Martha now." 

The poor old gentleman was in the more haste to 
leave the spot because he found himself standing right in 



42 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

front of bis own peculiar row of gravestones, consisting 
of eight or nine slabs of slate, adorned with carved bor- 
ders rather rudely cut, and the earliest one, that of his 
Bessie, bending aslant, because the frost of so many 
winters had slowly undermined it. Over one grave of 
the row, that of his gifted grandson, there was no 
memorial. He felt a strange repugnance, stronger than 
he had ever felt before, to linger by these graves, and 
had none of the tender sorrow mingled with high and 
tender hopes that had sometimes made it seem good to 
him to be there. Such moods, perhaps, often come to 
the aged, when the hardened earth-crust over their souls 
shuts them out from spiritual influences. 

Taking the child by the hand, — her little effervescence 
of infantile fun having passed into a downcast humor, 
though not well knowing as yet what a dusky cloud of 
disheartening fancies arose from these green hillocks, — 
he went heavily toward the garden-gate. Close to its 
threshold, so that one who was issuing forth or entering 
must needs step upon it or over it, lay a small flat stone, 
deeply embedded in the ground, and partly covered with 
grass, inscribed with the name of " Dr. John Swinnerton, 
Physician." 

" Ay," said the old man, as the well-remembered figure 
of his ancient instructor seemed to rise before him in his 
grave-apparel, with beard and gold-headed cane, black 
velvet doublet and cloak, " here lies a man who, as peo- 
ple have thought, had it in his power to avoid the grave ! 
He had no little grandchild to tease him. He had the 
choice to die, and chose it." 

So the old gentleman led Pansie over the stone, and 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 



43 



carefully closed the gate ; and, as it happened, he forgot 
the uprooted shrub, which Pausie, as she ran, had flung 
away, and which had fallen into the open grave ; and 
when the funeral came that afternoon, the coffin was let 
down upon it, so that its bright, inauspicious flower 
never bloomed again. 







ANOTHER FRAGMENT OF THE 
DOLLIVER ROMANCE* 




E secret ! " and he kept his stern eye fixed upon 
him, as the coach began to move. 

"Be secret! " repeated the apothecary. "I 
know not any secret that he has confided to me thus far, 
and as for his nonsense (as I will be bold to style it now 
he is gone), about a medicine of long life, it is a thing I 
forget in spite of myself, so very empty and trashy it is. 
I wonder, by the by, that it never came into my head to 
give the Colonel a dose of the cordial whereof I partook 
last night. I have no faith that it is a valuable medi- 
cine — little or none — and yet there has been an un- 
wonted briskness in me all the morning." 

Then a simple joy broke over his face — a flickering 
sunbeam among his wrinkles — as he heard the laughter 
of the little girl, who was running rampant with a kitten 
in the kitchen. 

" Pansie ! Pansie ! " cackled he, " grandpapa has sent 
away the ugly man now. Come, let us have a frolic in 
the garden." 

And he whispered to himself again, " That is a cordial 

* Never before printed. 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 45 

yonder, and I will take it according to the prescription, 
knowing all the ingredients." Then, after a moment's 
thought, he added, " All, save one." 

So, as he had declared to himself his intention, that 
night, when little Pansie had long been asleep, and his 
small household was in bed, and most of the quiet, old- 
fashioned townsfolk likewise, this good apothecary went 
into his laboratory, and took out of a cupboard in the 
wall a certain ancient-looking bottle, which was cased 
over with a network of what seemed to be woven silver, 
like the wicker-woven bottles of our days. He had pre- 
viously provided a goblet of pure water. Before opening 
the bottle, however, he seemed to hesitate, and pondered 
and babbled to himself; having long since come to that 
period of life, when the bodily frame, having lost much 
of its value, is more tenderly cared for, than when it was 
a perfect and inestimable machine. 

" I triturated, I infused, I distilled it myself in these 
very rooms, and know it — know it all — all the ingre- 
dients, save one. They are common things enough — 
comfortable things — some of them a little queer — one 
or two that folks have a prejudice against — and then 
there is that one thing that I don't know. It is foolish 
in me to be dallying with such a mess, which I thought 
was a piece of quackery, while that strange visitor bade 
me do it, — and yet, what a strength has come from it ! 
He said it was a rare cordial, and methinks it has bright- 
ened up my weary life all day, so that Pansie has found 
me the fitter playmate. And then the dose — it is so 
absurdly small ! I will try it again." 

He took the silver stopple from the bottle, and with a 



46 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

practised hand, tremulous as it was with age, so that one 
would have thought it must have shaken the liquor into 
a perfect shower of misapplied drops, he dropped — I 
have heard it said — only one single drop into the goblet 
of water. It fell into it with a dazzling brightness, Uke 
a spark of ruby flame, and subtly diffusing itself through 
the whole body of water, turned it to a rosy hue of great 
brilliancy. He held it up between his eyes and the light, 
and seemed to admire and wonder at it. 

" It is very odd," said he, " that such a pure, bright 
liquor should have come out of a parcel of weeds that 
mingled their juices here. The thing is a folly, — it is 
one of those compositions in which the chemists — the 
cabaHsts, perhaps — used to combine what they thought 
the virtues of many plants, thinking that something would 
result in the whole, which was not in either of them, and 
a new efficacy be created. Whereas, it has been the 
teaching of my experience, that one virtue counteracts 
another, and is the enemy of it. I never believed the 
former theory, even when that strange madman bade me 
do it. And what a thick, turbid matter it was, until that 
last ingredient, — that powder which he put in with his 
own hand ! Had he let me see it, I would first have ana- 
lyzed it, and discovered its component parts. The man 
was mad, undoubtedly, and this may have been poison. 
But its effect is good. Poh ! I will taste again, because 
of this weak, agued, miserable state of mine ; though it 
is a shame in me, a man of decent skill in my way, to 
believe in a quack's nostrum. But it is a comfortable 
kind of thing." 

Meantime, that single drop (for good Dr. Dolliver had 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 47 

immediately put a stopper into the bottle) diffused a 
sweet odor through the chamber, so that the ordinary 
fragrances and scents of apothecaries' stuff seemed to be 
controlled and influenced by it, and its bright potency 
also dispelled a certain dimness of the antiquated room. 

The Doctor, at the pressure of a great need, had given 
incredible pains to the manufacture of this medicine ; so 
that, reckoning the pains rather than the ingredients 
(all except one, of which he was not able to estimate the 
cost nor value), it was really worth its weight in gold. 
And, as it happened, he had bestowed upon it the hard 
labor of his poor life, and the time that was necessary 
for the support of his family, without return; for the 
customers, after playing off this cruel joke upon the old 
man, had never come back ; and now, for seven years, 
the bottle had stood in a corner of the cupboard. To be 
sure, the silver-cased bottle was worth a trifle for its 
silver, and still more, perhaps, as an antiquarian knick- 
knack. But, all things considered, the honest and sim- 
ple apothecary thought that he might make free with the 
liquid to such small extent as was necessary for himself. 
And there had been something in the concoction that 
had struck him ; and he had been fast breaking lately ; 
and so, in the dreary fantasy and lonely recklessness of 
his old age, he had suddenly bethought himself of this 
medicine (cordial, — as the strange man called it, which 
had come to him by long inheritance in his family) and 
he had determined to try it. And again, as the night 
before, he took out the receipt — a roll of antique parch- 
ment, out of which, provokingly, one fold had been lost 
— and put on his spectacles to puzzle out the passage. 



48 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

Guttam unicam in aquam puram, two gills. " If the 
Colonel should hear of this," said Dr. Dolliver, "he 
might fancy it his nostrum of long life, and insist on hav- 
ing the bottle for his own use. The foolish, fierce old 
gentleman ! He has grown very earthly, of late, else he 
would not desire such a thing. And a strong desire it 
must be to make him feel it desirable. For my part, I 
only wish for something that, for a short time, may clear 
my eyes, so that I may see little Pansie's beauty, and 
quicken my ears, that I may hear her sweet voice, and 
give me nerve, while God keeps me here, that I may live 
longer to earn bread for dear Pansie. She provided for, 
I would gladly lie down yonder with Bessie and our chil- 
dren. Ah ! the vanity of desiring lengthened days ! — 
There ! — I have drunk it, and methinks its final, subtle 
flavor hath strange potency in it." 

The old man shivered a little, as those shiver who have 
just swallowed good liquor, while it is permeating their 
vitals. Yet he seemed to be in a pleasant state of feel- 
ing, and, as was frequently the case with this simple soul, 
in a devout frame of mind. He read a chapter in the 
Bible, and said his prayers for Pansie and himself, before 
he went to bed, and had much better sleep tlian usually 
comes to people of his advanced age ; for, at that period, 
sleep is diffused through their wakefulness, and a dim 
and tiresome half-perception through their sleep, so that 
the only result is weariness. 

Nothing very extraordinary happened to Dr. Dolliver 
or his small household for some time afterwards. He was 
favored with a comfortable winter, and thanked Heaven 
for it, and put it to a good use (at least he intended 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 49 

it so) by concocting drugs ; which perhaps did a little 
towards peopling the graveyard, into which his windows 
looked ; but that was neither his purpose nor his fault. 
None of the sleepers, at all events, interrupted their 
slumbers to upbraid him. He had done according to his 
own artless conscience and the recipes of licensed physi- 
cians, and he looked no further, but pounded, triturated, 
infused, made electuaries, boluses, juleps, or whatever 
he termed his productions, with skill and diligence, 
thanking Heaven that he was spared to do so, when his 
contemporaries generally were getting incapable of simi- 
lar efforts. It struck him with some surprise, but much 
gratitude to Providence, that his sight seemed to be grow- 
ing rather better than worse. He certainly could read 
the crabbed handwriting and hieroglyphics of the physi- 
cians with more readiness than he could a year earlier. 
But he had been originally near-sighted, with large, pro- 
jecting eyes ; and near-sighted eyes always seem to get a 
new lease of light, as the years go on. One thing was 
perceptible about the Doctor's eyes, not only to himself 
in the glass, but to everybody else ; namely, that they had 
an unaccustomed gleaming brightness in them ; not so 
very bright either, but yet so much so, that little Pansie 
noticed it,' and sometimes, in her playful, roguish way, 
climbed up into his lap, and put both her small palms 
over them ; telling Grandpapa that he had stolen some- 
body else's eyes, and given away his own, and that she 
liked his old ones better. The poor old Doctor did his best 
to smile through his eyes, and so to reconcile Pansie to 
their brightness : but still she continually made the same 
silly remonstrance, so that he was fain to put on a pair 

3 D 



50 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

of green spectacles, when he was going to play with 
Pausie, or took her ou his knee. Nay, if he looked at 
her, as had always been his custom, after she was asleep, 
in order to see that all was well with her, the little child 
would put up her hands, as if he held a light that 
was flashing on her eyeballs ; and unless he turned 
away his gaze quickly, she would wake up in a fit of 
crying. 

On the whole, the apothecary had as comfortable a 
time as a man of his years could expect. The air of the 
house and of the old graveyard seemed to suit him. 
What so seldom happens in man's advancing age, his 
night's rest did him good, whereas, generally, an old man 
wakes up ten times as nervous and dispirited as he went 
to bed, just as if, during his sleep he had been working 
harder than ever he did in the daytime. It had been so 
with the Doctor himself till within a few months. To be 
sure, he had latterly begun to practise various rules of 
diet and exercise, which commended themselves to his 
approbation. He sawed some of his own fire-wood, and 
fancied that, as was reasonable, it fatigued him less day 
by day. He took walks with Pansie, and though, of 
course, her little footsteps, treading on the elastic air of 
childhood, far outstripped his own, still the old man 
knew that he was not beyond the recuperative period of 
life, and that exercise out of doors and proper food can 
do somewhat towards retarding the approach of age. He 
was inclined, also, to impute much good effect to a daily 
dose of Santa Cruz rum (a liquor much in vogue in that 
day), which he was now in the habit of quaffing at the 
meridian hour. All through the Doctor's life he had 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 51 

eschewed strong spirits ; " But after seventy," quoth old 
Dr. DoUiver," a man is all the better in head and stomach 
for a little stimulus " ; and it certainly seemed so in his 
case. Likewise, I know not precisely how often, but 
complying punctiliously with the recipe, as an apothecary 
naturally would, he took his drop of the mysterious cor- 
dial. 

He was inclined, however, to impute little or no effi- 
cacy to this, and to laugh at himself for having ever 
thought otherwise. The dose was so very minute ! and 
he had never been sensible of any remarkable eifect on 
taking it, after all. A genial warmth, he sometimes fan- 
cied, diffused itself throughout him, and perhaps contin- 
ued during the next day. A quiet and refreshing night's 
rest followed, and alacritous waking in the morning ; but 
all this was far more probably owing, as has been already 
hinted, to excellent and well-considered habits of diet and 
exercise. Nevertheless he still continued the cordial 
with tolerable regularity, — the more, because on one or 
two occasions, happening to omit it, it so chanced that he 
slept wretchedly, and awoke in strange aches and pains, 
torpors, nervousness, shaking of the hands, blearedness 
of sight, lowness of spirits and other ills, as is the mis- 
fortune of some old men ; who are often threatened by a 
thousand evil symptoms that come to nothing, forebod- 
ing no particular disorder, and passing away as unsatis- 
factorily as they come. At another time, he took two or 
three drops at once, and was alarmingly feverish in con- 
sequence. Yet it was very true, that the feverish symp- 
toms were pretty sure to disappear on his renewal of the 
medicine. " Still it could not be that," thought the old 



52 THE DOLIVER ROMANCE. 

man, a hater of empiricism (in whicli, however, is con- 
tained all hope for man), and disinclined to beheve in any- 
thing that was not according to rule and art. And then, 
as aforesaid, the dose was so ridiculously small ! 

Sometimes, however, he took, half laughingly, another 
view of it, and felt disposed to think that chance might 
really have thrown in his way a very remarkable mixture, 
by which, if it had happened to him earlier in life, he 
might have amassed a larger fortune, and might even 
have raked together such a competency as would have 
prevented his feeling much uneasiness about the future 
of little Pansie. Peeling as strong as he did nowadays, he 
might reasonably count upon ten years more of life, and 
in that time the precious liquor might be exchanged for 
much gold. "Let us see ! " quoth he, "by what attrac- 
tive name shall it be advertised ? ' The old man's cor- 
dial ? ' That promises too little. Poh, poh ! I would 
stain my honesty, my fair reputation, the accumulation 
of a lifetime, and befool my neighbor and the public, by 
any name that would make them imagine I had found 
that ridiculous talisman that the alchemists have sought. 
The old man's cordial, — that is best. And five shillings 
sterling the bottle. That surely were not too costly, and 
would give the medicine a better reputation and higher 
vogue (so foolish is the world), than if I were to put 
it lower. I will think further of this. But pshaw, 
pshaw ! " 

" What is the matter, Grandpapa," said little Pansie, 
who had stood by him, wishing to speak to him at least 
a minute, but had been deterred by his absorption, 
" Why do you say ' Pshaw ' ? " 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 53 

" Pshaw ! " repeated Grandpapa, " tliere is one ingre- 
dient that I don't know." 

So this very hopeful design was necessarily given up, 
but that it had occurred to Dr. Dolliver, was perhaps 
a token that his mind was in a very vigorous state ; 
for it had been noted of him through life, that he had 
little enterprise, little activity, and that for the want of 
these things, his very considerable skill in his art had 
been almost thrown away, as regarded his private affairs, 
when it might easily have led him to fortune. Whereas, 
here in his extreme age, he had first bethought himself 
of a way to grow rich. Sometimes this latter spring 
causes — as blossoms come on the autumnal tree — a 
spurt of vigor, or untimely greenness, when Nature 
laughs at her old child, half in kindness and half in 
scorn. It is observable, however, I fancy, that after 
such a spurt, age comes on with redoubled speed, and 
that the old man has only run forward with a show of 
force, in order to fall into his grave the sooner. 

Sometimes, as he was walking briskly along the street, 
with little Pansie clasping his hand, and perhaps frisking 
rather more than became a person of his venerable years, 
he had met the grim old wreck of Colonel Dabney, 
moving goutily, and gathering wrath anew with every 
touch of his painful foot to the ground ; or driving by in 
his carriage, showing an ashen, angry, wrinkled face at 
the window, and frowning at him — the apothecary 
tliought — with a peculiar fury, as if he took umbrage 
at his audacity in being less broken by age than a gen- 
tleman like himself. The apothecary could not help 
feeling as if there were some unsettled quarrel or dispute 



54 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

between liimself and the Colonel, he could not tell what 
or vrhj. The Colonel always gave him a haughty nod of 
half- recognition ; and the people ui the street, to whom 
he w'as a familiar object, would say, " The worshipful 
Colonel begins to find himself mortal like the rest of 
us. He feels his years." " He 'd be glad, I warrant," 
said one, " to change with you, Doctor. It shows what 
difference a good life makes in men, to look at him and 
you. You are half a score of years his elder, methinks, 
and yet look what temperance can do for a man. By 
my credit, neighbor, seeing how brisk you have been 
lately, I told my wife you seemed to be growing younger. 
It does me good to see it. We are about of an age, I 
think, and I like to notice how we old men keep young 
and keep one another in heart. I myself — ahem — 
ahem — feel younger this season than for these five years 
past." 

"It rejoices me that you feel so," quoth the apothe- 
cary, who had just been thinking that this neighbor of 
his had lost a great deal, both in mind and body, within 
a short period, and rather scorned him for it. " Indeed, 
I find old age less uncomfortable than I supposed. 
Little Pansie and I make excellent companions for one 
another." 

And then, dragged along by Pansie's little hand, and 
also impelled by a certain alacrity that rose with him in 
the morning, and lasted till his healthy rest at night, he 
bade farewell to his contemporary, and hastened on ; 
while the latter, left behind, was somewhat irritated as 
he looked at the vigorous movement of the apothecary's 
legs. 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 55 

"He need not make such a show of briskness neither/' 
muttered he to himself. "This touch of rheumatism 
troubles me a bit just now, but try it on a good day, and 
I 'd walk with him for a shilling. Pshaw ! I '11 walk 
to his funeral yet." 

One day, while the Doctor, with the activity that be- 
stirred itself in him nowadays, was mixing and manu- 
facturing certain medicaments that came in frequent 
demand, a carriage stopped at his door, and he recog- 
nized the voice of Colonel Dabney, talking in his cus- 
tomary stern tone to the woman who served him. And, 
a moment afterwards, the coach drove away, and he ac- 
tually heard the old dignitary lumbering up stairs, and 
bestowing a curse upon each particular step, as if that 
■were the method to make them soften and become easier 
when he should come down again. " Pray, your wor- 
ship," said the Doctor from above, " let me attend you 
below stairs." 

" No," growled the Colonel, " I '11 meet you on your 
own ground. I can climb a stair yet, and be hanged to 
you." 

So saying, he painfully finished the ascent, and came 
into the laboratory, where he let himself fall into the 
Doctor's easy-chair, with an anathema on the chair, the 
Doctor and himself ; and staring round through the dusk, 
he met the wide-open, startled eyes of little Pansie, who 
had been reading a gilt picture-book in the corner. 

" Send away that child, Dolliver," cried the Colonel, 
angrily. " Confound her, she makes my bones ache. I 
hate everything young." 



56 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

" Lord, Colonel," the poor apothecary ventured to say, 
"there must be young people in the world as well as 
old ones. 'T is my mind, a man's grandchildren keep 
him warm round about him." 

" I have none, and want none," sharply responded the 
Colonel ; " and as for young people, let me be one of 
them, and they may exist, otherwise not. It is a cursed 
bad arrangement of the world, that there are young and 
old here together." 

When Pansie had gone away, which she did with any- 
thing but reluctance, having a natural antipathy to this 
monster of a Colonel, the latter personage tapped with 
his crutch-handled cane on a chair that stood near, and 
nodded in an authoritative way to the apothecary to sit 
down in it. Dr. Dolliver complied submissively, and 
the Colonel, with dull, unkindly eyes, looked at him 
sternly, and with a kind of intelligence amid the aged 
stolidity of his aspect, that somewhat puzzled the Doc- 
tor. In this way he surveyed him all over, like a judge, 
when he means to hang a man, and for some reason or 
none, the apothecary felt his nerves shake, beneath this 
steadfast look. 

" Aha ! Doctor ! " said the Colonel at last, with a dolt- 
ish sneer, " you bear your years well." 

" Decently well. Colonel ; I thank Providence for it," 
answered the meek apothecary. 

" I should say," quoth the Colonel, " you are younger 
at this moment than when we spoke together two or 
three years ago. I noted then that your eyebrows were 
a handsome snow-white, such as befits a man who has 
passed beyond his threescore years and ten, and live 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 57 

years more. Why, they are getting dark again, Mr. 
Apothecary." 

" Nay, your worship must needs be mistaken there," 
said the Doctor, with a timorous chackle. "It is many 
a year since I have taken a deliberate note of my 
wretched old visage in a glass, but I remember they 
were white when I looked last." 

" Come, Doctor, I know a thing or two," said the 
Colonel, with a bitter scoff; "and what's this, you old 
rogue ? Why, you 've rubbed away a wrinkle since we 
met. Take off those infernal spectacles, and look me 
in the face. Ha! I see the devil in your eye. How 
dare you let it shine upon me so ? " 

"On my conscience. Colonel," said the apothecary, 
strangely struck with the coincidence of this accusation 
with little Pansie's complaint, "1 know not what you 
mean. My sight is pretty well for a man of my age. 
We near-sighted people begin to know our best eyesight, 
when other people have lost theirs." 

"Ah! ah! old rogue," repeated the insufferable Colo- 
nel, gnashing his ruined teeth at him, as if, for some 
incomprehensible reason, he wished to tear him to pieces 
and devour him. "I know you. You are taking the 
life away from me, villain ! and I told you it was my 
inheritance. And I told you there was a Bloody Foot- 
step, bearing its track down through my race." 

"I remember nothing of it," said the Doctor, in a 
quake, sure that tiie Colonel was in one of his mad fits, 
" And on the word of an honest man, I never wronged 
you in my life, Colonel." 

" We shall see," said the Colonel, whose wrinkled vis' 
3* 



58 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

age grew absolutely terrible "with its hardness ; and his 
dull eyes, without losing their dulness, seemed to look 
through him. 

" Listen to me, sir. Some ten years ago, there came 
to you a man on a secret business. He had an old, 
musty bit of parchment, on which were written some 
words, hardly legible, in an antique hand, — an old deed, 
it might have been, — some family document, and here 
and there the letters were faded away. But this man 
had spent his life over it, and he had made out the 
meaning, and he interpreted it to you, and left it with 
you, only there was one gap, — one torn or obliterated 
place. Well, sir, — and he bade you, with your poor 
little skill at the mortar, and for a certain sum, — ample 
repayment for such a service, — to manufacture this 
medicine, — this cordial. It was an ajffair of months. 
And just when you thought it finished, the man came 
again, and stood over your cursed beverage, and shook a 
powder, or dropped a lump into it, or put in some ingre- 
dient, in which was all the hidden virtue, — or, at least, it 
drew out all the hidden virtue of the mean and common 
herbs, and married them into a wondrous efficacy. This 
done, the man bade you do certain other things with the 
potation, and went away " — the Colonel hesitated a mo- 
ment — "and never came back again." 

"Surely, Colonel, you are correct," said the apothe- 
cary ; much startled, however, at the Colonel's showing 
himself so well acquainted with an incident which he had 
supposed a secret with himself alone. Yet he had a lit- 
tle reluctance in owning it, although he did not exactly 
understand why, since the Colonel had, apparently, no 
rightful claim to it^ at all events. 



THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 59 

" That medicine, that receipt," continued his visitor, 
" is my hereditary property, and I challenge you, on 
your peril, to give it up." 

" But what if the orignial owner should call upon me 
for it," objected Dr. Dolliver. 

" I '11 warrant you against that," said the Colonel ; 
and the apothecary thought there was something ghastly 
in his look and tone. "Why, 'tis ten year, you old 
fool ; and do you think a man with a treasure like that 
in his possession would have waited so long ? " 

" Seven years it was ago," said the apothecary, " Sep- 
tern annis passatis : so says the Latin." 

" Curse your Latin," answers the Colonel. " Pro- 
duce the stuff. You have been violating the first rule 
of your trade, — taking your own drugs, — your own, in 
one sense ; mine by the right of three hundred years. 
Bring it forth, I say ! " 

" Pray excuse me, worthy Colonel," pleaded the apoth- 
ecary ; for though convinced that the old gentleman was 
only in one of his insane fits, when he talked of the value 
of this concoction, yet he really did not like to give up 
the cordial, which perhaps had wrought him some bene- 
fit. Besides, he had at least a claim upon it for much 
trouble and skill expended in its composition. This he 
suggested to the Colonel, who scornfully took out of his 
pocket a net-work purse, with more golden guineas in it 
than the apothecary had seen in the whole seven years, 
and was rude enough to fling it in his face. " Take 
that," thundered he, " and give up the thing, or I will 
have you in prison before you are an hour older. Nay," 
he continued, growing paie, which was his mode of 



60 THE DOLLIVEH ROMANCE. 

showing terrible wrath ; since all through life, till ex- 
treme age quenched it, his ordinary face had been a 
blazing red, " I '11 put you to death, you villain, as I 've 
a right ! " And thrusting his hand into his waistcoat- 
pocket, lo ! the madman took a small pistol from it, 
which he cocked, and presented at the poor apothecary. 
The old fellow quaked and cowered in his chair, and 
would indeed have given his whole shopful of better 
concocted medicines than this, to be out of this danger. 
Besides, there were the guineas; the Colonel had paid 
him a princely sum for what was probably worth nothing. 

" Hold ! hold ! '* cried he as the Colonel, with stern eye 
pointed the pistol at his head. " You shall have it." 

So he rose all trembling, and crept to that secret 
cupboard, where the precious bottle — since precious it 
seemed to be — was reposited. In all his life, long as 
it had been, the apothecary had never before been threat- 
ened by a deadly weapon ; though many as deadly a 
thing had he seen poured into a glass, without winking. 
And so it seemed to take his heart and life away, and 
he brought the cordial forth feebly, and stood tremu- 
lously before the Colonel, ashy pale, and looking ten 
years older than his real age, instead of five years 
younger, as he had seemed just before this disastrous in- 
terview Math the Colonel. 

" You look as if you needed a drop of it yourself," 
said Colonel Dabney, with great scorn, "But not a 
drop shall you have. Already have you stolen too 
much," said he, lifting up the bottle, and marking the 
space to which the liquor had subsided in it in conse- 
quence of the minute doses with which the apothecary 



THE DOLLIVER HOMANCE. 61 

had made free. " Fool, had you taken your glass like a 
man, you might have been young again. Now, creep on, 
the few months you have left, poor, torpid knave, and 
die ! Come — a goblet ! quick ! " 

He clutched the bottle meanwhile voraciously, miserly, 
eagerly, furiously, as if it were his life that he held in 
his grasp ; angry, impatient, as if something long sought 
were within his reach, and not yet secure, — with longing 
thirst and desire ; suspicious of the world and of fate ; 
feeling as if an iron hand were over him, and a crowd of 
violent robbers round about him, struggling for it. At 
last, unable to wait longer, just as the apothecary was 
tottering away in quest of a drinking-glass, the Colonel 
took out the stopple, and lifted the flask itself to his lips. 

" For Heaven's sake, no ! " cried the Doctor. " The 
dose is one single drop ! — one drop, Colonel, one 
drop ! " 

"Not a drop to save your wretched old soul," re- 
sponded the Colonel ; probably thinking that the apoth- 
ecary was pleading for a small share of the precious 
liquor. He put it to his lips, and, as if quenching a 
lifelong thirst, swallowed deep draughts, sucking it in 
with desperation, till void of breath, he set it down 
upon the table. The rich, poignant perfume spread it- 
self through the air. 

The apothecary, with an instinctive carefulness that 
was rather ludicrous under the circumstances, caught up 
the stopper, which the Colonel had let fall, and forced it 
into the bottle to prevent any farther escape of virtue. 
He then fearfully watched the result of the madman's 
potation. 



62 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

The Colonel sat a moment in his chair, panting for 
breath; then started to his feet with a prompt vigor 
that contrasted widely with the infirm and rheumatic 
movements that had heretofore characterized him. He 
struck his forehead violently with one hand, and smote 
his chest with the other : he stamped his foot thunder- 
ously on the ground; then he leaped up to the ceiling, 
and came down with an elastic bound. Then he laughed, 
a wild, exulting ha ! ha ! with a strange triumphant 
roar that filled the house and re-echoed through it; a 
sound full of fierce, animal rapture, — enjoyment of sen- 
sual life mixed up with a sort of horror. After all, real 
as it was, it was like the sounds a man makes in a 
dream. And this, while the potent draught seemed still 
to be making its way through his system ; and the fright- 
ened apothecary thought that he intended a revengeful 
onslaught upon himself. Einally, he uttered a loud, un- 
earthly screech, in the midst of which his voice broke, 
as if some unseen hand were throttling him, and, start- 
ing forward, he fought frantically, as if he would clutch 
the life that was being rent away, — and fell forward 
w^ih a dead thump upon the floor. 

" Colonel! Colonel!" cried the terrified Doctor. 

The feeble old man, with difficulty, turned over the 
heavy frame, and saw at once, with practised eye, tliat 
he was dead. He set him up, and the corpse looked at 
him with angry reproach. He was so startled, that his 
subsequent recollections of the moment were neither 
distinct nor steadfast ; but he fancied, though he told the 
strange impression to no one, that on his first glimpse 
of the face, with a dark flush of what looked like rage 



THE DOLLIVEE, ROMANCE. 63 

still upon it, it was a young man's face that he saw, — 
a face with all the passionate energy of early manhood ; 
— the capacity for furious anger which the man had lost 
half a century ago, crammed to the brim with vigor till 
it became agony. But the next moment, if it were so 
(which it could not have been), the face grew ashen, 
withered, shrunken, more aged than in life, though still 
the murderous fierceness remained, and seemed to be 
petrified forever upon it. 

After a moment's bewilderment, Dolliver ran to the 
window, looking to the street, threw it open, and called 
loudly for assistance. He opened also another window, 
for the air to blow through, for he was almost stifled 
with the rich odor of the cordial which filled the room, 
and was now exuded from the corpse. 

He heard the voice of Pansie, crying at the door, 
which was locked, and, turning the key, he caught her 
in his arms, and hastened with her below stairs, to give 
her into the charge of Martha, who seemed half stupe- 
fied with a sense of something awful that had occurred. 

Meanwhile, there was a rattling and a banging at the 
street portal, to which several people had been attracted 
both by the Doctor's^ outcry from the window, and by 
the awful screech, in which the Colonel's spirit (if, 
indeed, he had that divine part), had just previously 
taken its flight. 

He let them in, and, pale and shivering, ushered them 
up to the death-chamber, where one or two, with a more 
delicate sense of smelling than the rest, snuffed the 
atmosphere, as if sensible of an unknown fragrance, yet 
appeared afraid to breathe, when tliey saw the -^errific 



64} THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 

countenance, leaning back against the chair, and eying 
tliem so truculently. 

I would fain quit the scene and have done with the 
Colonel, who, I am glad, has happened to die at so early 
a period of the narrative. I therefore hasten to say that 
a coroner's inquest was held on the spot, though every- 
body felt that it was merely ceremonial, and that the 
testimony of their good and ancient townsman, Dr. 
Dolliver, was amply sufficient to settle the matter. The 
verdict was, "Death by the visitation of God." 

The apothecary gave evidence that the Colonel, without 
asking leave, and positively against his advice, had drunk 
a quantity of distilled spirits ; and one or two servants, 
or members of the Colonel's family, testified that he had 
been in a very uncomfortable state of mind for some 
days past, so that they fancied he was insane. Therefore 
nobody thought of blaming Dr. Dolliver for what had 
happened ; and if the plain truth must be told, every- 
body who saw the wretch was too well content to be rid 
of him, to trouble themselves more than was quite neces- 
sary about the way in which the incumbrance had been 
removed. 

The corpse was taken to the mansion in order to 
receive a magnificent funeral ; and Dr. Dolliver was left 
outwardly in quiet, but much disturbed and indeed 
almost overwhelmed inwardly by what had happened. 
Yet it is to be observed, that he had accounted for the 
death with a singular dexterity of expression, when he 
attributed it to a dose of distilled spirits. What kind of 
distilled spirits were those, Doctor ? and will you ven- 
ture to take any more of them ? 



TALES AND SKETCHES. 




SKETCHES FROM MEMORY. 



I. 



THE INLAND PORT. 




T was a bright forenoon, when I set foot on the 
beach at Burlington, and took leave of the two 
boatmen in whose httle skiff I had voyaged 
since daylight from Peru. Not that we had come that 
morning from South America, but only from the New 
York shore of Lake Champlain. The highlands of the 
coast behind us stretched north and south, in a double 
range of bold, blue peaks, gazing over each other's shoul- 
ders at the Green Mountains of Vermont. 

The latter are far the loftiest, and, from the opposite 
side of the lake, had displayed a more striking outline. 
We were now almost at their feet, and could see only 
a sandy beach sweeping beneath a woody bank, around 
the semicircular Bay of Burlington. 

* Second series. The first series was added to the revised 
edition of the Mosses from an Old Manse. 



68 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

The painted lighthouse on a small green island, the 
wharves and warehouses, with sloops and schooners 
moored alongside, or at anchor, or spreading their can- 
vas to the wind, and boats rowing from point to point, 
reminded me of some fishing-town on the sea-coast. 

But I had no need of tasting the water to convince my- 
self that Lake Champlain was not an arm of the sea ; 
its quality was evident, both by its silvery surface, when 
unruffled, and a faint but unpleasant and sickly smell, 
forever steaming up in the sunshine. One breeze of the 
Atlantic with its briny fragrance would be worth more to 
these inland people than all the perfumes of Arabia. 
On closer inspection the vessels at the wharves looked 
hardly seaworthy, — there being a great lack of tar about 
the seams and rigging, and perhaps other deficiencies, 
quite as much to the purpose. 

I observed not a single sailor in the port. There 
were men, indeed, in blue jackets and trousers, but not 
of the true nautical fashion, such as dangle before slop- 
shops ; others wore tight pantaloons and coats prepon- 
derously long-tailed, — cutting very queer figures at the 
masthead ; and, in short, these fresh-water fellows had 
about the same analogy to the real *' old salt " with his 
tarpaulin, pea-jacket, and sailor-cloth trousers, as a lake 
fish to a Newfoundland cod. 

Nothing struck me more in Burlington, than the great 
number of Irish emigrants. They have filled the British 
Provinces to the brim, and still continue to ascend the 
St. Lawrence in infinite tribes overflowing by every out- 
let into the States. At Burlington, they swarm in huts 
and mean dwellings near the lake, lounge about the 



THE INLAND PORT. G9 

wharves, and elbow the native citizens entirely out of 
competition in tlieir 'own line. Every species of mere 
bodily labor is the prerogative of these Irish, Such is 
their multitude in comparison with any possible demand 
for their services, that it is difficult to conceive how a 
third part of tliem should earn even a daily glass of 
whiskey, which is doubtless their first necessary of life, 
— daily bread being only the second. 

Some were angling in the lake, but had caught only a 
few perch, which little fishes, without a miracle, would 
be nothing among so many. A miracle there certainly 
must have been, and a daily one, for the subsistence of 
these wandering hordes. The men exhibit a lazy strength 
and careless merriment, as if they had fed well hitherto, 
and meant to feed better hereafter; the women strode 
about, uncovered in the open air, with far plumper 
waists and brawnier limbs as well as bolder faces, than 
our shy and slender females ; and their progeny, which 
was innumerable, had the reddest and the roundest 
cheeks of any children in America. 

While we stood at the wharf, the bell of a steamboat 
gave two preliminary peals, and she dashed away for 
Plattsburgh, leaving a trail of smoky breath behind, and 
breaking the glassy surface of the lake before her. Our 
next movement brought us into a handsome and busy 
square, the sides of which were filled up with white 
houses, brick stores, a church, a court-house, and a bank. 
Some of these edifices had roofs of tin, in the fashion of 
Montreal, and glittered in the sun with cheerful splendor, 
imparting a lively effect to the whole square. One brick 
building, designated in large letters as the custom-house, 



70 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

remiBded us tliat this inland village is a port of entry, 
largely concerned in foreign trade and holding daily 
intercourse with the British empire. In this border 
country the Canadian bank-notes circulate as freely as 
our own, and British and American coin are jumbled 
into the same pocket, the effigies of the King of England 
being made to kiss those of the Goddess of Liberty. 

Perhaps there was an emblem in the involuntary con- 
tact. There was a pleasant mixture of people in the 
square of Burlington, such as cannot be seen elsewhere, 
at one view ; merchants from Montreal, British officers 
from the frontier garrisons, Erench Canadians, wandering 
Irish, Scotchmen of a better class, gentlemen of the South 
on a pleasure tour, country squires on business ; and a 
great throng of Green Mountain boys, with their horse- 
wagons and ox-teams, true Yankees in aspect, and look- 
ing more superlatively so, by contrast with such a 
variety of foreigners. 





II. 

ROCHESTER. 

HE gray but transparent evening rather shaded 
than obscured the scene, leaving its stronger 
features visible, and even improved by the 
medium through which I beheld them. The volume of 
water is not very great, nor the roar deep enough to be 
termed grand, though such praise might have been ap- 
propriate before the good people of Rochester had ab- 
stracted a part of the unprofitable sublimity of the cascade. 
The Genesee has contributed so bountifully to their canals 
and mill-dams, that it approaches the precipice with 
diminished pomp, and rushes over it in foamy streams of 
various width, leaving a broad face of the rock msulated 
and unwashed, between the two main branches of the 
falling river. Still it was an impressive sight, to one who 
had not seen Niagara. I confess, however, that my chief 
interest arose from a legend, connected with these falls, 
which will become poetical in the lapse of years, and was 
already so to me as I pictured the catastrophe out of 
dusk and soHtude. It was from a platform, raised over 
the naked island of the cliff, in the middle of the cataract 



72 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

that Sam Patch took his last leap, and alighted in the 
other world. Strange as it may appear, — that any un- 
certainty should rest upon his fate which was consum- 
mated in the sight of thousands, — many will tell you 
that the illustrious Patch concealed himself in a cave 
under the falls, and has continued to enjoy posthumous 
renown, without foregoing the comforts of this present 
life. But the poor fellow prized the shout of the multi- 
tude too much not to have claimed it at the instant, had 
he survived. He will not be seen again, unless his 
ghost, in such a twilight as when I was there, should 
emerge from the foam, and vanish among the shadows 
that fall from cliff to cliff. 

How stern a moral may be drawn from the story of 
poor Sam Patch ! Why do we call him a madman or a 
fool, when he has left his memory around the falls of the 
Genesee, more permanently than if the letters of his 
name had been hewn into the forehead of the precipice ? 

Was the leaper of cataracts more mad or foolish than 
other men who throw away life, or misspend it in pursuit 
of empty fame, and seldom so triumphantly as he ? That 
which he won is as invaluable as any except the unsought 
glory, spreading like the rich perfume of richer fruit 
from various and useful deeds. 

Thus musing, wise in theory, but practically as great 
a fool as Sam, I lifted my eyes and beheld the spires, 
warehouses, and dwellings of Rochester, half a mile 
distant on both sides of the river, indistinctly cheerful, 
with the twinkling of many lights amid the fall of the 
evening 

The town had sprung up like a mushroom, but no 



ROCHESTER. 73 

presage of decay could be drawn from its hasty growth. 
Its edifices are of dusky brick, and of stone that will not 
be grayer in a hundred years than now ; its churches are 
Gothic ; it is impossible to look at its worn pavements 
and conceive how lately the forest leaves have been swept 
away. The most ancient town in Massachusetts ap- 
pears quite Uke an affair of yesterday, compared with 
Rochester. Its attributes of youth are the activity and 
eager life with which it is redundant. The whole street, 
sidewalks and centre, was crowded with pedestrians, 
horsemen, stage-coaches, gigs, light wagons, and heavy 
ox-teams, all hurrying, trotting, rattling, and rumbling, 
in a throng that passed continually, but never passed 
away. Here, a country wife was selecting a churn from 
several gayly painted ones on the sunny sidewalk ; there, 
a farmer was bartering his produce ; and, in two or three 
places, a crowd of people were showering bids on a 
vociferous auctioneer. I saw a great wagon and an ox- 
chain knocked off to a very pretty woman. Numerous 
were the lottery offices, — those true temples of Mammon, 
— where red and yellow bills offered splendid fortunes 
to the world at large, and banners of painted cloth gave 
notice that the "lottery draws next Wednesday." At 
the ringing of a bell, judges, jurymen, lawyers, and 
clients, elbowed each other to the court-house, to busy 
themselves with cases that would doubtless illustrate the 
state of society, had I the means of reporting them. The 
number of public houses benefited the flow of tempo- 
rary population ; some were farmer's taverns, — cheap, 
homely, and comfortable ; others were magnificent hotels, 
with negro waiters, gentlemanly landlords in black broad- 
4 



74 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

clotli, and foppish bar-keepers in Broadway coats, with 
chased gold watches in their waistcoat-pockets. I caught 
one of these fellows quizzing me through an eye-glass. 
The porters were lumbering up the steps with baggage 
from the packet boats, while waiters plied the brush on 
dusty travellers, who, meanwhile, glanced over the in- 
numerable advertisements in the daily papers. 

In short, everybody seemed to be there, and all had 
something to do, and were doing it with all their might, 
except a party of drunken recruits for the Western mili- 
tary posts, principally Irish and Scotch, though they 
wore Uncle Sam's gray jacket and trousers. I noticed 
one other idle man. He carried a rifle on his shoulder 
and a powder-horn across his breast, and appeared to 
stare about him with confused wonder, as if, while he 
was listening to the wind among the forest boughs, the 
hum and bustle of an instantaneous city had surrounded 
him 




III. 



A NIGHT SCENE. 




HE steamboat in which I was passenger fo\ 
Detroit had put into the mouth of a small 
river, where the greater part of the night would 
be spent in repairing some damages of the machinery. 

As the evening was warm, though cloudy and very 
dark, I stood on deck, watching a scene that would not 
have attracted a second glance in the daytime, but be- 
came picturesque by the magic of strong light and deep 
shade. 

Some wild Irishmen were replenishing our stock of 
wood, and had kindled a great fire on the bank to illu- 
minate their labors. It was composed of large logs and 
dry brushwood, heaped together with careless profusion, 
blazing fiercely, spouting showers of sparks into the 
darkness, and gleaming wide over Lake Erie, — a beacon 
for perplexed voyagers leagues from land. 

All around and above the furnace, there was total 
obscurity. No trees or other objects caught and re- 
flected any portion of the brightness, which thus wasted 
itself in the immense void of night, as if it quivered from 



76 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the expiring embers of the world, after the final confla- 
gratiou. But the Irishmen were continually emerging 
from the dense gloom, passing through the lurid glow, 
and vanishing into the gloom on the other side. Some- 
times a whole figure would be made visible, by the shirt- 
sleeves and light-colored dress ; others were but half seen, 
like imperfect creatures ; many flitted, shadow-like, along 
the skirts of darkness, tempting fancy to a vain pursuit ; 
and often, a face alone was reddened by the fire, and 
stared strangely distinct, with no traces of a body. In 
short these wild Irish, distorted and exaggerated by the 
blaze, now lost in deep shadow, now bursting into sud- 
den splendor, and now struggling between light and 
darkness, formed a picture which might have been trans- 
ferred, almost unaltered, to a tale of the supernatural. 
As they all carried lanterns of wood, and often flung 
sticks upon the fire, the least imaginative spectator 
would at once compare them to devils condemned to 
keep alive the flames of their own torments. 




FRAGMENTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF A 
SOLITARY MAN. 

I. 




Y poor friend "Oberon"* — for let me be 
allowed to distiuguish him by so quaint a name 
— sleeps with the silent ages. He died calmly. 
Though his disease was pulmonary, his life did not flicker 
cut like a wasted lamp, sometimes shooting up into a 
strange temporary brightness ; but the tide of being 
ebbed away, and the noon of his existence waned till, 
in the simple phraseology of Scripture, "he was not." 
The last words he said to me were, " Burn ray papers, — 
all that you can find in yonder escritoire; for I fear 
there are some there which you may be betrayed into 
publishing. I have published enough ; as for the old 
disconnected journal in your possession — " But here 
my poor friend was checked in his utterance by that same 
hollow cough which would never let him alone. So he 
coughed himself tired, and sank to slumber. I watched 

* See the sketch or story entitled " The Devil in Manu- 
script," in "The Snow-Image, and other Twice-Told Tales." 



78 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

from that midnight hour till high noon on the morrow 
for his waking. The chamber was dark; till, longing 
for light, I opened the window-shutter, and the broad 
day looked in on the marble features of the dead. 

I religiously obeyed his instructions with regard to 
the papers in the escritoire, and burned them in a heap 
without looking into one, though sorely tempted. But 
the old journal I kept. Perhaps in strict conscience I 
ought also to have burned that; but casting my eye 
over some half-torn leaves the other day, I could not 
resist an impulse to give some fragments of it to the 
public. To do this satisfactorily, I am obliged to twist 
this thread, so as to string together into a semblance of 
order my Oberon's " random pearls." 

If anybody that holds any commerce with his fellow- 
men can be called solitary, Oberon was a " solitary man." 
He lived in a small village at some distance from the 
metropolis, and never came up to the city except once 
in three months for the purpose of looking into a book- 
store, and of spending two hours and a half with me. 
In that space of time I would tell him all that I could 
remember of interest which had occurred in the interim 
of his visits. He would join very heartily in the con- 
versation ; but as soon as the time of his usual tarrying 
had elapsed, he would take up his hat and depart. He 
was unequivocally the most original person I ever knew. 
His style of composition was very charming. No tales 
that have ever appeared in our popular journals have 
been so generally admired as his. But a sadness was 
on his spirit ; and this, added to the shrinking sensi- 
tiveness of his nature, rendered him not misanthropic, 



JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 79 

but singularly averse to social intercourse. Of the dis- 
ease, which was slowly sapping the springs of his life, 
he first became fully conscious after one of those long 
abstractions in which he was wont to indulge. It is 
remarkable, however, that his first idea of this sort, 
instead of deepening his spirit with a more melancholy 
hue, restored him to a more natural state of mind. 

He had evidently cherished a secret hope that some 
impulse would at length be given him, or that he would 
muster sufficient energy of will to return into the world, 
and act a wiser and happier part than his former one. 
But life never called the dreamer forth; it was Death 
that whispered him. It is to be regretted that this por- 
tion of his old journal contains so few passages relative 
to this interesting period ; since the little which he has 
recorded, though melancholy enough, breathes the gen- 
tleness of a spirit newly restored to communion with its 
kind. If there be anything bitter in the following reflec- 
tions, its source is in human sympathy, and its sole object 
is himself. 

" It is hard to die without one's happiness ; to none 
more so than myself, whose early resolution it had been 
to partake largely of the joys of hfe, but never to be 
burdened with its cares. Vain philosophy ! The very 
hardships of the poorest laborer, whose whole existence 
seems one long toil, has something preferable to my best 
pleasures. 

" Merely skimming the surface of life, I know nothing, 
by my own experience, of its deep and warm realities. I 
have achieved none of those objects which the instinct 
of mankind especially prompts them to pursue, and the 



80 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

accomplisliment of which must therefore beget a native 
satisfaction. The truly wise, after all their speculations, 
will be led into the common path, and, in homage to the 
human nature that pervades them, will gather gold, and 
till the earth, and set out trees, and build a house. But 
I have scorned such wisdom. I have rejected, also, the 
settled, sober, careful gladness of a man by his own fire- 
side, with those around him whose welfare is committed 
to his trust and all their guidance to his fond authority. 
Without influence among serious affairs, my footsteps 
were not imprinted on the earth, but lost in air ; and I 
shall leave no son to inherit my share of life, with a bet- 
ter sense of its privileges and duties, when his father 
should vanish like a bubble ; so that few mortals, even 
the humblest and the weakest, have been such ineffectual 
shadows in the world, or die so utterly as I must. Even 
a young man's bliss has not been mine. With a thou- 
sand vagrant fantasies, I have never truly loved, aiid 
perhaps shall be doomed to loneliness throughout the 
eternal future, because, here on earth, my soul has never 
married itself to the soul of woman. 

" Such are the repinings of one who feels, too late, 
that the sympathies of his nature have avenged them- 
selves upon him. They have prostrated, with a joyless 
life and the prospect of a reluctant death, my selfish pur- 
pose to keep aloof from mortal disquietudes, and be a 
pleasant idler among care-stricken and laborious men. 
I have other regrets, too, savoring more of my old spirit. 
The time has been when I meant to visit every region of 
the earth, except the poles and Central Africa. I had 
a strange longing to see the Pyramids, To Persia and 



JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 81 

Arabia, and all the gorgeous East, I owed a pilgrimage 
for the sake of their magic tales. And England, the 
land of my ancestors ! Once I had fancied that my sleep 
would not be quiet in the grave unless I should return, 
as it were, to my home of past ages, and see the very 
cities, and castles, and battle-fields of history, and stand 
within the holy gloom of its cathedrals, and kneel at the 
shrines of its immortal poets, there asserting myself tbeir 
hereditary countryman. This feehng lay among the 
deepest in my heart. Yet, with this homesickness for 
the father-land, and all these plans of remote travel, — 
which I yet believe that my peculiar instinct impelled 
me to form, and upbraided me for not accomplishing, — • 
the utmost limit of my wanderings has been little more 
than six hundred miles from my native village. Thus, 
in whatever way I consider my life, or what must be 
termed such, I cannot feel as if I had lived at all. 

" I am possessed, also, with the thought that I have 
never yet discovered the real secret of my powers ; that 
there has been a mighty treasure within my reach, a mine 
of gold beneath my feet, worthless because I have never 
known how to seek for it ; and for want of perhaps one 
fortunate idea, I am to die 

* Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.' 

" Once, amid the troubled and tumultuous enjoyment 
of my life, there was a dreamy thought that haunted me, 
— the terrible necessity imposed on mortals to grow old, 
or die. I could not bear the idea of losing one youthful 
grace. True, I saw other men, who had once been 
young and now were old, enduring their age with equa- 

4* F 



82 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

iiimity, because each year reconciled them to its own 
added weight. But for myself, I felt that age would be 
not less miserable, creeping upon me slowly, than if it 
fell at once. I sometimes looked in the glass, and en- 
deavored to fancy my clieeks yellow and interlaced with 
furrows, my forehead wrinkled deeply across, the top of 
my head bald and polished, my eyebrows and side-locks 
iron gray, and a grisly beard sprouting on my chin. 
Shuddering at the picture, I changed it for the dead face 
of a young man, with dark locks clustering heavily round 
its pale beauty, which would decay, indeed, but not with 
years, nor in the sight of men. The latter visage shocked 
me least. 

" Such a repugnance to the hard conditions of long 
life is common to all sensitive and thoughtful men, who 
minister to the luxury, the refinements, the gayety and 
lightsomeness, to anything, in short, but the real necessi- 
ties of their fellow-creatures. He who has a part in the 
serious business of life, though it be only as a shoemaker, 
feels himself equally respectable in youth and in age, and 
therefore is content to live and look forward to wrinkles 
and decrepitude in their due season. It is far otherwise 
with the busy idlers of the world. I was particularly 
liable to this torment, being a meditative person in 
spite of my levity. The truth could not be concealed, 
nor the contemplation of it avoided. With deep in- 
quietude I became aware that what was graceful now, 
and seemed appropriate enough to my age of flowers, 
would be ridiculous in middle life ; and that the world, 
so indulgent to the fantastic youtli, would scorn the 
bearded man, still telling love-tales, loftily ambitious of 



JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 83 

a maiden's tears, and squeezing out, as it were, with his 
brawny strengtli, the essence of roses. And in his old 
age the sweet lyrics of Anacreon made the girls laugh at 
his white hairs the more. With such sentiments, con- 
scious that my part in the drama of life was fit only for a 
youthful performer, I nourished a regretful desire to be 
summoned early from the scene. I set a limit to myself, 
the age of twenty-five, few years indeed, but too many 
to be thrown away. Scarcely had I thus fixed the term 
of my mortal pilgrimage, than the thought grew into a 
presentiment that, when the space should be completed, 
the world would have one butterfly the less, by my far 
flight. 

" O, how fond I was of Hfe, even while allotting, as 
my proper destiny, an early death ! I loved the world, 
its cities, its villages, its grassy roadsides, its wild forests, 
its quiet scenes, its gay, warm, enlivening bustle; in 
every aspect, I loved the world so long as I could 
behold it with young eyes and dance through it with a 
young heart. The earth had been made so beautiful, 
that I longed for no brighter sphere, but only an ever- 
youthful eternity in this. I clung to earth as if my be- 
ginning and ending were to be there, unable to imagine 
any but an earthly happiness, and choosing such, with all 
its imperfections, rather than perfect bliss which might 
be alien from it. Alas ! I had not yet known that weari- 
ness by which the soul proves itself ethereal." 

Turning over the old journal, I open, by chance, upon 
a passage which affords a signal instance of the morbid 
fancies to which Oberon frequently yielded himself. 
Dreams like the following were probably engendered by 



84 TALES AND SKETCPIES. 

the deep gloom sometimes thrown over his mind by his 
reflections on death. 

" I dreamed that one bright forenoon I was walking 
through Broadway, and seeking to cheer myself with tlie 
warm and busy life of that far-famed promenade. Here a 
coach thundered over the pavement, and there an un- 
wieldy omnibus, with spruce gigs rattling past, and 
horsemen prancing through all the bustle. On the side- 
walk people were looking at the rich display of goods, 
the plate and jewelry, or the latest caricature in the book- 
seller's windows ; while fair ladies and whiskered gentle- 
men tripped gayly along, nodding mutual recognitions, 
or shrinking from some rough countryman or sturdy 
laborer whose contact might have ruffled their finery. I 
found myself in this animated scene, with a dim and 
misty idea that it was not my proper place, or that I had 
ventured into the crowd with some singularity of dress 
or aspect which made me ridiculous. Walking in the 
sunshine, I was yet cold as death. By degrees, too, I 
perceived myself the object of universal attention, and, 
as it seemed, of horror and affright. Every face grew 
pale ; the laugh was hushed, and the voices died away in 
broken syllables ; the people in the shops crowded to the 
doors with a ghastly stare, and the passengers on all 
sides fled as from an embodied pestilence. The horses 
reared and snorted. An old beggar-woman sat before 
St. Paul's Church, with her withered palm stretched out 
to all, but drew it back from me, and pointed to the 
graves and monuments in that populous churchyard. 
Three lovely girls whom I had formerly known, ran 
shrieking across the street, A personage in black, whom 



• JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 85 

I was about to overtake, suddenly turned his Lead and 
showed the features of a long-lost friend. He gave me a 
look of horror and was gone. 

" I passed not one step farther, but threw my eyes on 
a looking-glass which stood deep within the nearest shop. 
At first glimpse of my own figure I awoke, with a horri- 
ble sensation of self-terror and self-loathing. No wonder 
that the affrighted city fled ! I had been promenading 
Broadway in my shroud ! " 

I should be doing injustice to my friend's memory, 
were 1 to publish other extracts even nearer to insanity 
than this, from the scarcely legible papers before me. I 
gather from them — for I do not remember that he ever 
related to me the circumstances — that he once made a 
journey, chiefly on foot, to Niagara. Some conduct of 
the friends among whom he resided in his native village 
was constructed by him into oppression. These were 
the friends to whose care he had been committed by his 
parents, who died when Oberon was about twelve years 
of age. Though he had always been treated by them 
with the most uniform kindness, and though a favorite 
among the people of the village rather on account of the 
sympathy which they felt in his situation than from 
any merit of his own, such was the waywardness of his 
temper, that on a slight provocation he ran away from 
the home that sheltered him, expressing openly his deter- 
mination to die sooner than return to the detested spot. 
A severe illness overtook him after he had been absent 
about four months. While ill, he felt how unsoothing 
were the kindest looks and tones of strangers. He rose 
from his sick-bed a better man, and determined upon a 



86 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

speedy self-atonement by returning to his native town. 
There he lived, sohtary and sad, but forgiven and cher- 
ished by his friends, till the day he died. That part of 
the journal which contained a description of this journey 
is mostly destroyed. Here and there is a fragment. I 
cannot select, for the pages are very scanty ; but I do 
not withhold the following fragments, because they indi- 
cate a better and more cheerful frame of mind than the 
foregoing. 



"On i-eaching the ferry -house, a rude structure of 
boards at the foot of the cliff, I found several of those 
wretches devoid of poetry, and lost some of my own 
poetry by contact with them. The hut was crowded by a 
party of provincials, — a simple and merry set, who had 
spent the afternoon fishing near the Falls, and were bar- 
tering black and white bass and eels for the ferryman's 
whiskey. A greyhound and three spaniels, brutes of 
much more grace and decorous demeanor than their 
masters, sat at the door. A few yards off, yet wholly 
unnoticed by the dogs, was a beautiful fox, whose coun- 
tenance betokened all the sagacity attributed to him in 
ancient fable. He had a comfortable bed of straw in an 
old barrel, whither he retreated, flourishing his bushy 
tail as I made a step towards him, but soon came forth 
and surveyed me with a keen and intelligent eye. 'The 
Canadians bartered their fish and drank their whiskey, 
and were loquacious on trifling subjects, and merry at 
simple jests, with as little regard to the scenery as they 
could have to the flattest part of the Grand Canal. . Nor 



JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 87 

was I entitled to despise them ; for I amused myself 
with all those foolish matters of fishermen, and dogs, and 
fox, just as if Sublimity and Beauty were not married 
at that place and moment ; as if their nuptial band were 
not the brightest of all rainbows on the opposite shore ; 
as if the gray precipice were not frowning above my head 
and Niagara thundering around me. 

"The grim ferryman, a black-whiskered giant, half 
drunk withal, now thrust the Canadians by main force 
out of his door, launched a boat, and bade me sit in the 
stern-sheets. Where we crossed the river was white 
with foam, yet did not offer much resistance to a straight 
passage, which brought us close to the outer edge of 
the American falls. The rainbow vanished as we neared 
its misty base, and when I leaped ashore, the sun had left 
all Niagara in shadow." 



"A sound of merriment, sweet voices and girlish 
laughter, came dancing through the solemn roar of wa- 
ters. In old times, when the Erench, and afterwards 
the English, held garrisons near Niagara, it used to be 
deemed a feat worthy of a soldier, a- frontier man, or 
an Indian, to cross the rapids to Goat Island. As the 
country became less rude and warlike, a long space in- 
tervened, in which it was but half believed, by a faint 
and doubtful tradition, that mortal foot had never trod 
this wild spot of precipice and forest clinging between 
two cataracts. The island is no longer a tangled forest, 
but a grove of stately trees, with grassy intervals about 
their roots and woodland paths among their trunks. 



50 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

There was neither soldier nor Indian here now, but a 
vision of three lovely girls, running brief races through 
the broken sunshine of the grove, hiding behind the 
trees, and pelting each other with the cones of the pine. 
When their sport had brought them near me, it so hap- 
pened that one of the party ran up and shook me by the 
hand, — a greeting which I heartily returned, and would 
have done the same had it been tenderer. I had known 
this wild little black-eyed lass in my youth and her child- 
hood, before I had commenced my rambles. 

"We met on terms of freedom and kindness, which 
elder ladies might have thought unsuitable with a gen- 
tleman of my description. When I alluded to the two 
fair strangers, she shouted after them by their Christian 
names, at which summons, with grave dignity, they drew 
near, and honored me with a distant courtesy. They 
were from the upper part of Vermont. Whether sisters, 
or cousins, or at all related to each other, I cannot tell ; 
but they are planted in my memory like ' two twin roses 
on one stem,' with the fresh dew in both their bosoms ; 
and when I would have pure and pleasant thoughts, I 
think of them. Neither of them could have seen sev- 
enteen years. They both were of a height, and that a 
moderate one. The rose-bloom of their cheeks could 
iiardly be called bright in her who was the rosiest, nor 
faint, though a shade less deep, in her companion. Both 
had delicate eyebrows, not strongly defined, yet some- 
what darker than their hair; both had small sweet 
mouths, maiden mouths, of not so warm and deep a tint 
as ruby, but only red as the reddest rose; each had 
those gems, the rarest, the most precious, a pair of clear. 



JOURNAL OP A SOLITARY MAN. 89 

soft bright blue eyes. Their style of dress was similar ; 
one had on a black silk gown, with a stomacher of vel- 
vet, and scalloped cuffs of the same from the wrist to 
the elbow; the other wore cuffs and stomaclier of the 
like pattern and material, over a gown of crimson silk. 
The dress was rather heavy for their slight figures, but 
suited to September. They and the darker beauty all 
carried their straw bonnets in their hands." 

I cannot better conclude these fragments than with 
poor Oberon's description of his return to his native 
village after his slow recovery from his illness. How 
beautifully does he express his penitential emotions ! A 
beautiful moral may be indeed drawn from the early 
death of a sensitive recluse, who had shunned the ordi- 
nary avenues of distinction, and with splendid abilities 
sank to rest into an early grave, almost unknown to 
mankind, and without any record save what my pen 
hastily leaves upon these tear-blotted pages. 




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1 



II. 



MY HOME RETURN. 




HEN the stage-coach had gamed the summit of 
the hill, I alighted to perform the small re- 
mainder of my journey on foot. There had not 
been a more delicious afternoon than this in all the train 
of summer, the air being a sunny perfume, made up of 
balm and warmth, and gentle brightness. The oak and 
walnut trees over my head retained their deep masses of 
foliage, and the grass, though for months the pasturage 
of stray cattle, had been revived with the freshness of 
early June by the autumnal rains of the preceding week. 
The garb of autumn, indeed, resembled that of spring. 
Dandelions and butterflies were sprinkled along the road- 
side like drops of brightest gold in greenest grass, and 
a star-shaped little flower of blue, with a golden centre. 
Ill a rocky spot, and rooted under the stone walk, there 
was one wild rose-bush bearing three roses very faintly 
tinted, but blessed with a spicy fragrance. The same 
tokens would have announced that the year M^as brighten- 
ing into the glow of summer. There were violets too, 
though few and pale ones. But the breath of September 



MY HOME RETURN. 91 

was diffused through the mild air, and became percepti- 
ble, too thrillinglj for my enfeebled frame, whenever a 
little breeze shook out the latent coolness. 

" I was standing on the hill at the entrance of my native 
village, whence I had looked back to bid farewell, and for- 
ward to the pale mist-bow that overarched my path, and 
was the omen of my fortunes. How I had misinterpreted 
that augury, the ghost of hope, with none of hope's 
bright hues ! Nor could I deem that all its portents 
were yet accomplished, though from the same western 
sky the declining sun shone brightly in my face. But I 
was calm and not depressed. Turning to the village, so 
dim and dream-like at my last view, I saw the white 
houses and brick stores, the intermingled trees, the foot- 
paths with their wide borders of grass, and the dusty 
road between ; all a picture of peaceful gladness in the 
sunshine. 

" ' Why have I never loved my home before ? ' thought 
I, as my spirit reposed itself on the quiet beauty of the 
scene. 

" On the side of the opposite hill was the graveyard, 
sloping towards the farther extremity of the village. 
The sun shone as cheerfully there as on the abodes of 
the living, and showed all the little hillocks and the 
burial-stones, white marble or slate, and here and there 
a tomb, with the pleasant grass about them all. A single 
tree was tinged with glory from the west, and threw a 
pensive shade behind. Not far from where it fell was 
the tomb of my parents, whom I had hardly thought of 
in bidding adieu to the village, but had remembered them 
more faithfully among the feelings that drew me home- 



92 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

ward. At my departure their tomb Lad been hidden in 
the morning mist. Beholding it in the sunshine now, I 
felt a sensation through my frame as if a breeze had 
tlirown the coolness of September over me, though not a 
leaf was stirred, nor did the thistle-down take flight. 
Was I to roam no more through this beautiful world, but 
only to the other end of the village ? Then let me he 
down near my parents, but not with them, because I 
love a green grave better than a tomb. 

" Moving slowly forward, I heard shouts and laughter, 
and perceived a considerable throng of people, who came 
from behind the meeting-house and made a stand in front 
of it. Thither all the idlers in the village were congre- 
gated to witness the exercises of the engine company, 
this being the afternoon of their monthly practice. They 
deluged the roof of the meeting-house, till the water fell 
from the eaves in a broad cascade ; then the stream beat 
against the dusty windows like a thunder-storm ; and 
sometimes they flung it up beside the steeple, sparkling 
in an ascending shower about the weathercock. For 
variety's sake the engineer made it undulate horizon- 
tally, like a great serpent flying over the earth. As his 
last effort, being roguishly inclined, he seemed to take 
aim at the sky, falling short rather of which, down came 
the fluid, transformed to drops of silver, on the thickest 
crowd of the spectators. Then ensued a prodigious rout 
and mirthful uproar, with no little wrath of the surly 
ones, whom this is an infallible method of distinguishing. 
The joke afforded infinite amusement to the ladies at the 
windows and some old people under the hay-scales, I 
also laughed at a distance, and was glad to find myself 



MY HOME RETURN. 93 

susceptible, as of old, to the simple mirth of such a 
scene. 

" Bat the thoughts that it excited were not all mirth- 
ful. I had witnessed hundreds of such spectacles in my 
youth, and one precisely similar only a few days before 
my departure. And now, the aspect of the village being 
the same, and the crowd composed of my old acquaint- 
ances, I could hardly realize that years had passed, or 
even months, or that the very drops of water were not 
falling at this moment, which had been flung up then. 
But I pressed the conviction home, that, brief as the 
time appeared, it had been long enough for me to wander 
away and return again, with my fate accomplished, and 
little more hope in this world. The last throb of an 
adventurous and wayward spirit kept me from repining. 
I felt as if it were better, or not worse, to have com- 
pressed my enjoyments and sufferings into a few wild 
years, and then to rest myself in an early grave, than to 
have chosen the untroubled and ungladdened course of 
the crowd before me, whose days were all alike, and a 
long lifetime like each day. But the sentiment startled 
me. For a moment I doubted whether my dear-bought 
wisdom were anything but the incapacity to pursue 
fresh follies, and whether, if health and strength could 
be restored that niglit, I should be found in the village 
after to-morrow's dawn. 

" Among other novelties, I had noticed that the tavern 
was now designated as a Temperance House, in letters 
extending across the whole front, witli a smaller sign 
promising Hot Coffee at all hours, and Spruce Beer to 
lodgers gratis. There were few new buildings, except a 



94 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

Methodist cliapel and a printing-office, with a bookstore 
in the lower story. Tlie golden mortar still ornamented 
the apothecary's door, nor had the Indian Chief, with his 
gilded tobacco stalk, been relieved from doing sentinel's 
duty before Dominicus Pike's grocery. The gorgeous 
silks, though of later patterns, were still flaunting like a 
banner in front of Mr. Nightingale's dry-goods store. 
Some of the signs introduced me to strangers, whose 
predecessors had failed, or emigrated to the West, or 
removed merely to the other end of the village, trans- 
ferring their names from the sign-boards to slabs of 
marble or slate. But, on the whole, death and vicissi- 
tude had done very little. There were old men, scat- 
tered about the street, who had been old in my earliest 
reminiscences; and, as if their venerable forms were 
permanent parts of the creation, they appeared to be 
hale and hearty old men yet. The less elderly were 
more altered, having generally contracted a stoop, with 
hair wofully thinned and whitened. Some I could hardly 
recognize; at my last glance they had been boys and 
girls, but were young men and women when I looked 
again ; and there were happy little things too, rolling 
about on the grass, whom God had made since my 
departure. 

"But now, in my lingering course I had descended 
the hill, and began to consider, painfully enough, how I 
should meet my townspeople, and what reception they 
would give me. Of many an evil prophecy, doubtless, 
had I been the subject. And would they salute me 
with a roar of triumph or a low hiss of scorn, on behold- 
ing their worst anticipations more than accomphshed ? 



MY HOME RETURN. 95 

" ' No/ said I, ' they will not triumph over me. And 
should they ask the cause of my return, I will tell them 
that a man may go far and tarry long away, if his health 
be good and his hopes high ; but that when flesh and 
spirit begin to fail, he remembers his birthplace and the 
old burial-ground, and hears a voice calling him to come 
home to his father and mother. They will know, by my 
wasted frame and feeble step, that I have heard the sum- 
mons and obeyed. And, the first greetings over, they 
will let me walk among them unnoticed, and linger in the 
sunshine while I may, and steal into my grave in peace.' 

" With these reflections I looked kindly at the crowd, 
and drew off my glove, ready to give my hand to the 
first that should put forth his. It occurred to me, also, 
that some youth among them, now at the crisis of his 
fate, might have felt his bosom thrill at my example, and 
be emulous of my wild life and worthless fame. But I 
would save him. 

" ' He shall be taught,' said I, ' by my life, and by my 
death, that the world is a sad one for him who shrinks 
from its sober duties. My experience shall warn him to 
adopt some great and serious aim, such as manhood will 
cling to, that he may not feel himself, too late, a cumberer 
of this overladen earth, but a man among men. I will 
beseech him not to follow an eccentric path, nor, by step- 
ping aside from the highway of human afiairs, to relin- 
quish his claim upon human sympathy. And often, as 
a text of deep and varied meaning, I will remind him 
that he is an American.' 

" By this time I had drawn near the meeting-house, 
and perceived that the crowd were beginning to recog- 
nize me." 



96 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

These are the last words traced by his hand. Has not 
so chastened a spirit found true communion with the 
pure in Heaven ? " Until of late, I never could believe 
that I was seriously ill : the past, I thought, could not 
extend its misery beyond itself ; life was restored to me, 
and should not be missed again. I had day-dreams even 
of wedded happiness. StOl, as the days wear on, a 
faintness creeps through my frame and spirit, recalling 
the consciousness that a very old man might as well 
nourish hope and young desire as I at twenty-four. Yet 
the consciousness of my situation does not always make 
me sad. Sometimes I look upon the world with a quiet 
interest, because it cannot concern me personally, and a 
loving one for the same reason, because nothing selfish 
can interfere with the sense of brotherhood. Soon to be 
all spirit, I have already a spiritual sense of human na- 
ture, and see deeply into the hearts of mankind, discov- 
ering what is bidden from the wisest. The loves of 
young men and virgins are known to me, before the first 
kiss, before the whispered word, with the birth of the 
first sigh. My glance comprehends the crowd, and pen- 
etrates the breast of the solitary man. I think better of 
the world than formerly, more generously of its virtues, 
more mercifully of its faults, with a higher estimate of 
its present happiness, and brighter hopes of its destiny. 
My mind has put fortli a second crop of blossoms, as the 
trees do in the Indian summer. No winter will destroy 
their beauty, for they are fanned by the breeze and fresh- 
ened by the shower that breathes and falls in the gardens 
of Paradise ! " 



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MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. 



1 


1 


i 



EVER, did a pilgrim approach Niagara with 
deeper enthusiasm than mine. I had lingered 
away from it, and wandered to other scenes, 
because my treasury of anticipated enjoyments, compris- 
ing all the wonders of the world, had nothmg else so 
magnificent, and I was loath to exchange the pleasures 
of hope for those of memory so soon. At length the 
day came. The stage-coach, with a Frenchman and my- 
self on the back seat, had already left Lewiston, and in 
less than an hour would set us down in Manchester. I 
began to listen for the roar of the cataract, and trembled 
with a sensation like dread, as the moment drew nigh, 
when its voice of ages must roll, for the first time, on 
my ear. The Erench gentleman stretched himself from 
the window, and expressed loud admiration, while, by a 
sudden impulse, I threw myself back and closed my eyes. 
When the scene shut in, I was glad to think, that for 
me the whole burst of Niagara was yet in futurity. We 
rolled on, and entered the village of Manchester, border- 
ing on the falls. 

I am quite ashamed of myself here. Not that I ran, 
like a madman to the falls, and plunged into the thickest 

5 G 



98 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

of the spray, — never stopping to breathe, till breathing 
was impossible : not that I committed this, or any other 
suitable extravagance. On the contrary, I alighted vrith 
perfect decency and composure, gave my cloak to the 
black waiter, pointed out my baggage, and inquired, not 
the nearest way to the cataract, but about the dinner- 
hour. The interval was spent in arranging my dress. 
Within the last fifteen minutes, my mind had grown 
strangely benumbed, and my spirits apathetic, with a 
slight depression, not decided enough to be termed sad- 
ness. My enthusiasm was in a deathlike slumber. With- 
out aspiring to immortality, as he did, I could have imi- 
tated that English traveller, who turned back from the 
point where he first heard the thunder of Niagara, after 
crossing the ocean to behold it. Many a Western trader, 
by the by, has performed a similar act of heroism with 
more heroic simplicity, deeming it no such wonderful 
feat to dine at the hotel and resume his route to Buf- 
falo or Lewiston, while the cataract was roaring un- 
seen. 

Such has often been my apathy, when objects, long 
sought, and earnestly desired, were placed within my 
reach. After dinner — at which an unwonted and 
perverse epicurism detained me longer than usual — I 
lighted a cigar and paced the piazza, minutely attentive 
to the aspect and business of a very ordinary village. 
Finally, with reluctant step, and the feeling of an in- 
truder, I walked towards Goat Island. At the toll- 
house, there were further excuses for delaying the inev- 
itable moment. My signature was required in a huge 
ledger, containing similar records innumerable, many of 



MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. 99 

which I read. The skin of a great sturgeon, and other 
fishes, beasts, and reptiles ; a collection of minerals, such 
as lie in heaps near the falls ; some Indian moccasons, 
and other trifles, made of deer-skin and embroidered 
with beads; several newspapers from Montreal, New 
York, and Boston ; — all attracted me in turn. Out of a 
number of twisted sticks, the manufacture of a Tuscarora 
Indian, I selected one of curled maple, curiously convo- 
luted, and adorned with the carved images of a snake 
and a fish. Using this as my pilgrim's staff, I crossed 
the bridge. Above and below me were the rapids, a 
river of impetuous snow, with here and there a dark 
rock amid its whiteness, resisting all the physical fury, 
as auy cold spirit did the moral influences of the scene. 
On reaching Goat Island, which separates the two great 
segments of the falls, I chose the right-hand path, and 
followed it to the edge of the American cascade. There, 
while the falling sheet was yet invisible, I saw the 
vapor that never vanishes, and the Eternal Rainbow of 
Niagara. 

It was an afternoon of glorious sunshine, without a 
cloud, save those of the cataracts. I gained an insulated 
rock, and beheld a broad sheet of brilliant and unbroken 
foam, not shooting in a curved line from the top of the 
precipice, but falling headlong down from height to 
depth. A narrow stream diverged from the main branch, 
and hurried over the crag by a channel of its own, leav- 
ing a little pine-clad island and a streak of precipice, 
between itself and the larger sheet. Below arose the 
mist, on which was painted a dazzling sun-bow with two 
concentric shadows, — one, almost as perfect as the origi- 

L.ofC. 



100 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

nal brightness ; and the other, drawn faintly round the 
broken edge of the cloud. 

Still I had not half seen Niagara. Following the 
verge of the island, the path led me to the Horseshoe, 
where the real, broad St. Lawrence, rushing along on a 
level with its banks, pours its whole breadth over a con- 
cave line of precipice, and thence pursues its course be- 
tween lofty crags towards Ontario. A sort of bridge, 
two or three feet wide, stretches out along the edge of 
the descending sheet, and hangs upon the rising mist, as 
if that were the foundation of the frail structure. Here 
I stationed myself in the blast of wind, which the rushing 
river bore along with it. The bridge was tremulous be- 
neath me, and marked the tremor of the solid earth. I 
looked along the whitening rapids, and endeavored to 
distinguish a mass of water far above the falls, to follow 
it to their verge, and go down with it, in fancy, to the 
abyss of clouds and storm. Casting my eyes across the 
river, and every side, I took in the whole scene at a 
glance, and tried to comprehend it in one vast idea. 
After an hour thus spent, I left the bridge, and, by a 
staircase, winding almost interminably round a post, de- 
scended to the base of the precipice. Prom that point, 
my path lay over slippery stones, and among great frag- 
ments of the cliff, to the edge of the cataract, where the 
wind at once enveloped me in spray, and perhaps dashed 
the rainbow round me. Were my long desires fulfilled ? 
And had I seen Niagara ? 

O that I had never heard of Niagara till I beheld it ! 
Blessed were the wanderers of old, who heard its deep 
roar, sounding through the woods, as the summons to 



MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. 101 

an unknown wonder, and approached its awful brink, in 
all the freshness of native feeling. Had its own myste- 
rious voice been the first to warn me of its existence, 
then, indeed, I might have knelt down and worshipped. 
But I had come thither, haunted with a vision of foam 
and fury, and dizzy cliffs, and an ocean tumbling down 
out of the sky, — a scene, in short, which nature had 
too much good taste and calm simplicity to realize. My 
mind had struggled to adapt these false conceptions to 
the reality, and finding the eff'ort vain, a wretched sense 
of disappointment weighed me down. I climbed the 
precipice, and threw myself on the earth, feeling that 
I was unworthy to look at the Great Falls, and care- 
less about beholding them again 

All that night, as there has been and will be, for ages 
past and to come, a rushing sound was heard, as if a 
great tempest were sweeping through the air. It min- 
gled with my dreams, and made them full of storm and 
whirlwind. Whenever I awoke, and heard this dread 
sound in the air, and the windows rattling as with a 
mighty blast, I could not rest again, till looking forth, 1 
saw how bright the stars were, and that every leaf in 
the garden was motionless. Never was a summer night 
more calm to the eye, nor a gale of autumn louder to 
the ear. The rushing sound proceeds from the rapids, 
and the rattling of the casements is but an effect of the 
vibration of the whole house, shaken by the jar of the 
cataract. The noise of the rapids draws the attention 
from the true voice of Niagara, which is a dull, muffled 
thunder, resounding between the cliffs. I spent a wake- 
ful hour at midnight, in distinguishing its reverberations^ 



102 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

and rejoiced to find that my former awe and enthusiasm 
were reviving. 

Gradually, and after much contemplation, I came to 
know, by my own feelings, that Niagara is indeed a won- 
der of the world, and not the less wonderful, because 
time and thought must be employed in comprehending 
it. Casting aside all preconceived notions, and prepa- 
ration to be dire-struck or delighted, the beholder 
must stand beside it in the simplicity of his heart, 
suffering the mighty scene to work its own impression. 
Night after night, I dreamed of it, and was glad- 
dened every morning by the consciousness of a growing 
capacity to enjoy it. Yet I will not pretend to the all- 
absorbing enthusiasm of some more fortunate spectators, 
nor deny that very trifling causes would draw my eyes 
and thoughts from the cataract. 

The last day that I was to spend at Niagara, before 
my departure for the Far West, I sat upon the Table 
Rock. This celebrated station did not now, as of old, 
project fifty feet beyond the line of the precipice, but 
was shattered by the fall of an immense fragment, which 
lay distant on the shore below. Still, on the utmost 
verge of the rock, with my feet hanging over it, I felt as 
if suspended in the open air. Never before had my mind 
been in such perfect unison with the scene. There were 
intervals, when I was conscious of nothing but the great 
river, rolling calmly into the abyss, rather descending 
than precipitating itself, and acquiring tenfold majesty 
from its unhurried motion. It came like the march of 
Destiny. It was not taken by surprise, but seemed to 
have anticipated, in all its course through the broad 



MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. 103 

lakes, that it must pour their collected waters down this 
height. The perfect foam of the river, after its descent, 
and the ever-varying shapes of mist, rising up, to become 
clouds in the sky, would be the very picture of confusion, 
were it merely transient, like the rage of a tempest. But 
when the beholder has stood awhile, and perceives no 
lull in the storm, and considers that the vapor and the 
foam are as everlasting as the rocks which produce them, 
all this turmoil assumes a sort of calmness. It soothes, 
while it awes the mind. 

Leaning over the cliff, I saw the guide conducting two 
adventurers behind the falls. It was pleasant, from that 
high seat in the sunshine, to observe them struggling 
against the eternal storm of the lower regions, with 
heads bent down, now faltering, now pressing forward, 
and finally swallowed up in their victory. After their 
disappearance, a blast rushed out with an old hat, which 
it had swept from one of their heads. The rock, to 
which they were directing their unseen course, is marked, 
at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet 
of foam. The attempt to reach it appears both poetical 
and perilous to a looker-on, but may be accomplished 
without much more difficulty or hazard, than in stem- 
ming a violent northeaster. In a few moments, forth 
came the children of the mist. Dripping and breathless, 
they crept along the base of the cliff, ascended to the 
guide's cottage, and received, I presume, a certificate of 
their achievement, with three verses of sublime poetry 
on the back. 

My contemplations were often interrupted by strangers, 
who came down from Forsyth's to take their first view 



104 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

of the falls. A short, ruddy, middle-aged gentleman, 
fresh from Old England, peeped over the rock, and 
evinced his approbation by a broad grin. His spouse, 
a very robust lady, afforded a sweet example of mater- 
nal solicitude, being so intent on the safety of her little 
boy that she did not even glance at Niagara. As for 
the child, he gave himself wholly to the enjoyment of a 
stick of candy. Another traveller, a native American, 
and no rare character among us, produced a volume of 
Captain Hall's tour, and labored earnestly to adjust 
Niagara to the captain's description, departing, at last, 
without one new idea or sensation of his own. The next 
comer was provided, not with a printed book, but with 
a blank sheet of foolscap, from top to bottom of which, 
by means of an ever-pointed pencil, the cataract was 
made to thunder. In a little talk, which we had to- 
gether, he awarded his approbation to the general view, 
but censured the position of Goat Island, observing that 
it should have been thrown farther to the right, so as 
to vriden the American falls, and contract those of the 
Horseshoe. Next appeared two traders of Michigan, who 
declared, that, upon the whole, the sight was worth look- 
ing at ; there certainly was an immense water-power here ; 
but that, after all, they would go twice as far to see the 
noble stone-works of Lockport, where the Grand Canal 
is locked down a descent of sixty feet. They were suc- 
ceeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with 
a staff in his hand, and a pack over his shoulders. He 
advanced close to the edge of the rock, where his atten- 
tion, at first wavering among the different components of 
the scene, finally became fixed in the angle of the Horse- 



MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. "** 105 

shoe falls, which is, indeed, the central point of interest. 
His whole soul seemed to go forth and be transported 
thither, till the staff slipped from his relaxed grasp, and 
falling down — down — down — struck upon the frag- 
ment of the Table Rock. 

In this manner I spent some hours, watching the 
varied impression, made by the cataract, on those who 
disturbed me, and returning to unwearied contemplation, 
when left alone. At length my time came to depart. 
There is a grassy footpath, through the woods, along the 
summit of the bank, to a point whence a causeway, hewn 
in the side of the precipice, goes winding down to the 
Ferry, about half a mile below the Table Rock. The sun 
was near setting, when I emerged from the shadow of 
the trees, and began the descent. The indirectness of 
my downward road continually changed the point of 
view, and showed me, in rich and repeated succession, 
now, the whitening rapids and majestic leap of the main 
river, which appeared more deeply massive as the light 
departed ; now, the lovelier picture, yet still sublime, of 
Goat Island, with its rocks and grove, and the lesser falls, 
tumbling over the right bank of the St. Lawrence, like a 
tributary stream ; now, the long vista of the river, as it 
eddied and whirled between the cliffs, to pass through 
Ontario toward the sea, and everywhere to be wondered 
at, for this one unrivalled scene. The golden sunshine 
tinged the sheet of the American cascade, and painted on 
its heaving spray the broken semicircle of a rainbow, 
heaven's own beauty crowning earth's sublimity. My 
steps were slow, and I paused long at every turn of 
the descent, as one lingers and pauses, who discerns u 
5* 



106 



TALES AND SKETCHES. 



brighter and brightening excellence in what he must 
soon behold no more. The solitude of the old wilderness 
now reigned over the whole vicinity of the falls. My 
enjoyment became the more rapturous, because no poet 
shared it, nor wretch devoid of poetry profaned it; 
but the spot so famous through the world was all my 
own! 




THE ANTIQUE RING. 



ES, indeed : the gem is as bright as a star, and 
curiously set," said Clara Pemberton, examin- 
ing an antique ring, which her betrothed lover 
had just presented to her, with a very pretty speech. 
" It needs only one thing to make it perfect." 

" And what is that ? " asked Mr. Edward Caryl, secretly 
anxious for the credit of his gift. " A modern setting, 
perhaps ? " 

" O, no ! That would destroy the charm at once," re- 
plied Clara. " It needs nothing but a story. I long 
to know how many times it has been the pledge of faith 
between two lovers, and whether the vows, of which it 
was the symbol, were always kept or often broken. Not 
that I should be too scrupulous about facts. If you 
happen to be unacquainted with its authentic history, so 
much the better. May it not have sparkled upon a 
queen's finger ? Or who knows but it is the very ring 
which Posthumus received from Imogen ? In short, you 
must kindle your imagination at the lustre of this dia- 
mond, and make a legend for it." 

Now such a task — and doubtless Clara knew it — was 



108 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the most acceptable that could have heen imposed on 
Edward Caryl. He was one of that multitude of young 
gentlemen — limbs, or rather twigs of the law — whose 
names appear in gilt letters on the front of Tudor's 
Buildings, and other places in the vicinity of the Court 
House, which seem to be the haunt of the gentler as 
well as the severer Muses. Edward, in the dearth of 
clients, was accustomed to employ his much leisure in 
assisting the growth of American Literature, to which 
good cause he had contributed not a few quires of the 
finest letter-paper, containing some thought, some fancy, 
some depth of feeling, together with a young writer's 
abundance of conceits. Sonnets, stanzas of Tennysonian 
sweetness, tales imbued with German mysticism, versions 
from Jean Paul, criticisms of the old English poets, and 
essays smacking of Dialistic philosophy, were among his 
multifarious productions. The editors of the fashionable 
periodicals were familiar with his autography, and in- 
scribed his name in those brilliant bead-rolls of ink- 
stained celebrity, which illustrate the first page of their 
covers. Nor did fame withhold her laurel. Hillard had 
included him among the lights of the New England me- 
tropolis, in his Boston Book ; Bryant had found room for 
some of his stanzas, in the Selections from American 
Poetry ; and Mr. Griswold, in his recent assemblage of 
the sons and daughters of song, had introduced Edward 
Caryl into the inner court of the temple, among his four- 
score choicest bards. There was a prospect, indeed, of 
his assuming a still higher and more independent posi- 
tion. Interviews had been held with Ticknor, and a 
correspondence with the Harpers, respecting a proposed 



THE ANTIQUE RING. 109 

volume, chiefly to consist of Mr. Caryl's fugitive pieces 
in the Magazines, but to be accompanied with a poem of 
some length, never before published. Not improbably, 
the public may yet be gratified with this collection. 

Meanwhile, we sum up our sketch of Edward Caryl, 
by pronouncing him, though somewhat of a carpet knight 
in literature, yet no unfavorable specimen of a generation 
of rising writers, whose spirit is such that we may rea- 
sonably expect creditable attempts from all, and good and 
beautiful results from some. And, it will be observed, 
Edward was the very man to write pretty legends, at a 
lady's instance, for an old-fashioned diamond ring. He 
took the jewel in his hand, and turned it so as to catch 
its scintillating radiance, as if hoping, in accordance with 
Clara's suggestion, to light up his fancy with that star- 
like gleam. 

" Shall it be a ballad ? — a tale in verse ? " he inquired. 
" Enchanted rings often glisten in old English poetry, I 
think something may be done with the subject ; but it is 
fitter for rhyme than prose," 

" No, no," said Miss Pemberton, " we will have no 
more rhyme than just enough for a posy to the ring. 
You must tell the legend in simple prose ; and when it 
is finished, I will make a little party to hear it read." 

The young gentleman promised obedience ; and going 
to his pillow, with his head full of the familiar spirits 
that used to be worn in rings, watches, and sword-hilts, 
he had the good fortune to possess himself of an available 
idea in a dream. Connecting this with what he himself 
chanced to know of the ring's real history, his task was 
done. Clara Pemberton invited a select few of her 



110 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

friends, all holding the stanchest faith in Edward's gen- 
ius, and therefore the most genial auditors, if not alto- 
gether the fairest critics, that a writer could possibly 
desire. Blessed be woman for her faculty of admiration, 
and especially for her tendency to admire with her heart, 
when man, at most, grants merely a cold approval with 
his mind ! 

Drawing his chair beneath the blaze of a solar lamp, 
Edward Caryl untied a roll of glossy paper, and began 
as follows : — 



THE LEGEND. 

After the death-warrant had been read to the Earl of 
Essex, and on the evening before his appointed execu- 
tion, the Countess of Shrewsbury paid his lordship a 
visit, and found him, as it appeared, toying childishly 
with a ring. The diamond, that enriched it, glittered 
like a Httle star, but with a singular tinge of red. The 
gloomy prison-chamber in the Tower, with its deep and 
narrow windows piercing the walls of stone, was now all 
that the earl possessed of worldly prospect; so that 
there was the less wonder that he should look steadfastly 
into the gem, and moralize upon earth's deceitful splen- 
dor, as men in darkness and ruin seldom fail to do. But 
the shrewd observations of the countess, — an artful and 
unprincipled woman, — the pretended friend of Essex, 
but who had come to glut her revenge for a deed of 
scorn which he himself had forgotten, — her keen eye 
detected a deeper interest attached to this jewel. Even 
while expressing his gratitude for her remembrance of a 



THE ANTIQUE RING. Ill 

ruiued favorite, and condemned criminal, the earl's glance 
reverted to the ring, as if all that remained of time and 
its affairs were collected within that small golden circlet. 

" My dear lord," observed the countess, " there is 
surely some matter of great moment wherewith this ring 
is connected, since it so absorbs your mind. A token, it 
may be, of some fair lady's love, — alas, poor lady, once 
richest in possessing such a heart ! Would you that the 
jewel be returned to her? " 

" The queen ! the queen ! It was her Majesty's own 
gift," replied the earl, still gazing into the depths of the 
gem. " She took it from her finger, and told me, with 
a smile, that it was an heirloom from her Tudor ances- 
tors, and had once been the property of Merlin, the 
British wizard, who gave it to the lady of his love. His 
art had made this diamond the abiding-place of a spirit, 
which, though of fiendish nature, was bound to work only 
good, so long as the ring was an unviolated pledge of 
love and faith, both* with the giver and receiver. But 
should love prove false, and faith be broken, then the 
evil spirit would work his own devilish will, until the 
ring were purified by becoming the medium of some 
good and holy act, and again the pledge of faithful love. 
The gem soon lost its virtue ; for the wizard was mur- 
dered by the very lady to whom he gave it." 

" An idle legend ! " said the countess. 

" It is so," answered Essex, with a melancholy smile. 
" Yet the queen's favor, of which this ring was the sym- 
bol, has proved my ruin. When death is nigh, men 
converse with dreams and shadows. 1 have been gazing 
into the diamond, and fancying — but you will laugh at 



112 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

me — that I might catch a glimpse of the evil spirit 
there. Do you observe this red glow, — dusky, too, 
amid all the brightness ? It is the token of his pres- 
ence ; and even now, methinks, it grows redder and 
duskier, like an angry sunset." 

Nevertheless, the earl's manner testified how slight 
was his credence in the enchanted properties of the 
ring. But there is a kind of playfulness that comes in 
moments of despair, when the reahty of misfortune, if 
entirely felt, would crush the soul at once. He now, for 
a brief space, was lost in thought, while the countess 
contemplated him with malignant satisfaction. 

"This ring," he resumed, in another tone, "alone 
remains, of all that my royal mistress's favor lavished 
upon her servant. My fortune once shone as brightly as 
the gem. And now, such a darkness has fallen around 
me, methinks it would be no marvel if its gleam — the 
sole light of my prison-house — were to be forthwith 
extinguished ; inasmuch as my last earthly hope depends 
upon it." 

"How say you, my lord?" asked the Countess of 
Shrewsbury. "The stone is bright; but there should 
be strange magic in it, if it can keep your hopes alive, 
at this sad hour. Alas ! these iron bars and ramparts 
of the Tower are unlike to yield to such a spell." 

Essex raised his head involuntarily; for there was 
something in the countess's tone that disturbed him, 
although he could not suspect that an enemy had in- 
truded upon the sacred privacy of a prisoner's dungeon, 
to exult over so dark a ruin of such once brilliant for- 
tunes. He looked her in the face, but saw nothing to 



THE ANTIQUE RING. 113 

awaken his distrust. It would have required a keener 
eye than even Cecil's to read the secret of a countenance, 
which had been worn so long in the false light of a court, 
that it was now little better than a mask, telling any story 
save the true one. The condemned nobleman again bent 
over the ring, and proceeded : — 

"It once had power in it, — this bright gem, — the 
magic that appertains to the talisman of a great queen's 
favor. She bade me, if hereafter I should fall into her 
disgrace, — how deep soever, and whatever might be the 
crime, — to convey this jewel to her sight, and it should 
plead for me. Doubtless, with her piercing judgment, 
she had even then detected the rashness of my nature, 
and foreboded some such deed as has now brought de- 
struction upon my head. And knowing, too, her own 
hereditary rigor, she designed, it may be, that the mem- 
ory of gentler and kindlier hours should soften her heart 
in my behalf, when my need should be the greatest. I 
have doubted, — I have distrusted, — yet who can tell, 
even now, what happy influence this ring might have ? " 

" You have delayed full long to show the ring, and 
plead her Majesty's gracious promise," remarked the 
countess, — " your state being what it is." 

" True," replied the earl : " but for my honor's sake, 
I was loath to entreat the queen's mercy, while I might 
hope for life, at least, from the justice of the laws. If, 
on a trial by my peers, I had been acquitted of meditat- 
ing violence against her sacred life, then would. I have 
fallen at her feet, and presenting the jewel, have prayed 
no other favor than that my love and zeal should be put 
to the severest test. But now — it were confessing too 



114 TALES AND SKETCTIES. 

much — it were cringing too low — to beg tlie miserable 
gift of life, on no other score than the tenderness which 
her Majesty deems me to have forfeited ! " 

" Yet it is your only hope," said the countess. 

"And besides," continued Essex, pursuing his own 
reflections, " of what avail will be this token of womanly 
feeling, when, on the other hand, are arrayed the all-pre- 
vailing motives of state policy, and the artifices and in- 
trigues of courtiers, to consummate my downfall ? Will 
Cecil or Raleigh suffer her heart to act for itself, even if 
the spirit of her father were not in her ? It is in vain 
to hope it." 

But still Essex gazed at the ring with an absorbed 
attention, that proved how much hope his sanguine tem- 
perament had concentrated here, when there was none 
else for him in the wide world, save what lay in the 
compass of that hoop of gold. The spark of brightness 
within the diamond, which gleamed like an intenser 
than earthly fire, was the memorial of his dazzling 
career. It had not paled with the waning sunshine of 
his mistress's favor; on the contrary, in spite of its 
remarkable tinge of dusky red, he fancied that it never 
shone so brightly. The glow of festal torches, — the 
blaze of perfumed lamps, — bonfires that had been kin- 
dled for him, when he was the darling of the people, — 
the splendor of the royal court, where he had been the 
peculiar star, — all seemed to have collected their moral 
or material glory into the gem, and to burn with a radi- 
ance caught from the future, as well as gathered from 
the past. That radiance might break forth again. Burst- 
ing from the diamond, into which it was now narrowed. 



THE ANTiqUE RING. 115 

it might beam first upon the gloomy walls of the Tower, 
— then wider, wider, wider, — till all England, and the 
seas around her cUffs, should be gladdened with the 
light. It was such an ecstasy as often ensues after long 
depression, and has been supposed to precede the cir- 
cumstances of darkest fate that may befall mortal man. 
The earl pressed the ring to his heart as if it were indeed 
a talisman, the habitation of a spirit, as the queen had 
playfully assured him, — but a spirit of happier influences 
than her legend spake of. 

" 0, could I but make my way to her footstool ! '* 
cried he, waving his hand aloft, while he paced the stone 
pavement of his prison-chamber with an impetuous 
step. " I might kneel down, indeed, a ruined man, con- 
demned to the block, but how should I rise again ? 
Once more the favorite of Elizabeth ! — England's proud- 
est noble! — with such prospects as ambition never aimed 
at ! Why have I tarried so long in this weary dun- 
geon ? The ring has power to set me free ! The palace 
wants me ! Ho, jailer, unbar the door ! " 

But then occurred the recollection of the impossibility 
of obtaining an interview with his fatally estranged mis- 
tress, and testing the influence over her affections, which 
he still flattered himself with possessing. Could he step 
beyond the limits of his prison, the world would be all 
sunshine ; but here was only gloom and death. 

" Alas ! " said he, slowly and sadly, letting his head 
fall upon his hands. " I die for the lack of one blessed 
word." 

The Countess of Shrewsbury, herself forgotten amid 
the earl's gorgeous visions, had watched him with an 



116 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

aspect tliat could have betrayed nothing to the most 
suspicious observer ; unless that it was too calm for 
humanity, while witnessing the flutterings, as it were, 
of a generous heart in the death-agony. She now ap- 
proached him. 

"My good lord/' she said, "what mean you to 
do?" 

" Nothing, — my deeds are done ! " replied he, de- 
spondingly ; " yet, had a fallen favorite any friends, 
I would entreat one of them to lay this ring at her 
Majesty's feet; albeit with little hope, save that, here- 
after, it might remind her that poor Essex, once far too 
highly favored, was at last too severely dealt with." 

" I will be that friend," said the countess. " There 
is no time to be lost. Trust this precious ring with 
me. This very night the queen's eye shall rest upon 
it ; nor shall the efficacy of my poor words be wanting, 
to strengthen the impression which it will doubtless 
make." 

The earl's first impulse was to hold out the ring. But 
looking at the countess, as she bent forward to receive it, 
he fancied that the red glow of the gem tinged all her 
face, and gave it an ominous expression. Many passages 
of past times recurred to his memory. A preternatural 
insight, perchance caught from approaching death, threw 
its momentary gleam, as from a meteor, all round his 
position. 

"Countess," he said, "I know not wherefore 1 hesi- 
tate, being in a plight so desperate, and having so little 
choice of friends. But have you looked into your own 
heart ? Can you perform this office Math the truth — 



THE ANTIQUE RING. 117 

tlie earnestness — the zeal, even to tears, and agony of 
spirit — wlierewith the holy gift of human life should be 
pleaded for ? Woe be unto you, should you undertake 
this task, and deal towards me otherwise than with 
utmost faith ! For your own soul's sake, and as you 
would have peace at your death-hour, consider well in 
what spirit you receive this ring ! " 

The countess did not shrink. 

" My lord ! — my good lord ! " she exclaimed, " wrong 
not a woman's heart by these suspicions. You might 
choose another messenger ; but who, save a lady of her 
bedchamber, can obtain access to the queen at this un- 
timely hour ? It is for your life, — for your life, — else 
I would not renew my offer." 

" Take the ring," said the earl. 

" Believe that it shall be in the queen's hands before 
the lapse of another hour," replied the countess, as she 
received this sacred trust of life and death. " To-mor- 
row morning look for the result of my intercession." 

She departed. Again the earl's hopes rose high. 
Dreams visited his slumber, not of the sable-decked 
scaffold in the Tower-yard, but of canopies of state, ob- 
sequious courtiers, pomp, splendor, the smile of the once 
more gracious queen, and a light beaming from the magic 
gem, which illuminated his whole future. 

History records how foully the Countess of Shrews- 
bury betrayed the trust, which Essex, in his utmost need, 
confided to her. She kept the ring, and stood in the 
presence of Elizabeth, that night, without one attempt to 
soften her stern hereditary temper in behalf of the 
former favorite. The next day the earl's noble head 



118 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

rolled upon the scaffold. On her death-bed, tortured, at 
last, with a sense of the dreadful guilt which she had 
taken upon her soul, the wicked countess sent for Eliza- 
beth, revealed the story of the ring, and besought for- 
giveness for her treachery. But the queen, still obdu- 
rate, even while remorse for past obduracy was tugging 
at her heart-strings, shook the dying woman in her bed, 
as if struggling with death for the privilege of wreaking 
her revenge and spite. The spirit of the countess passed 
away, to undergo the justice, or receive the mercy, of a 
higher tribunal; and tradition says, that the fatal ring 
was found upon her breast, where it had imprinted a 
dark red circle, resembling the effect of the intensest 
heat. The attendants, who prepared the body for burial, 
shuddered, whispering one to another, that the ring must 
have derived its heat from the glow of infernal fire. They 
left it on her breast, in the coffin, and it went with that 
guilty woman to the tomb. 

Many years afterward, when the church, that con- 
tained the monuments of the Shrewsbury family, was 
desecrated by Cromwell's soldiers, they broke open the 
ancestral vaults, and stole whatever was valuable from 
the noble personages who reposed there. Merlin's 
antique ring passed into the possession of a stout sergeant 
of the Ironsides, who thus became subject to the in- 
fluences of the evil spirit that still kept his abode within 
the gem's enchanted depths. The sergeant was soon 
slain in battle, thus transmitting the ring, though without 
any legal form of testament, to a gay cavalier, who forth- 
with pawned it, and expended the money in liquor, which 
speedily brought him to 1h^ grave. We next catch the 



THE ANTIQUE RING. 119 

sparkle of the magic diamond at various epochs of the 
merry reign of Charles the Second. But its sinister for- 
tune still attended it. From whatever hand this ring of 
portent came, and whatever finger it encircled, ever it was 
the pledge of deceit between man and man, or man and 
woman, of faithless vows, and unhallowed passion; and 
whether to lords and ladies, or to village-maids, — for 
sometimes it found its way so low, — still it brouglit 
nothing but sorrow and disgrace. No purifying deed 
was done, to drive the fiend from his bright home in this 
little star. Again, we hear of it at a later period, when 
Sir Robert Walpole bestowed the ring, among far richer 
jewels, on the lady of a British legislator, whose political 
honor he wished to undermine. Many a dismal and un- 
happy tale might be wrought out of its other adventures. 
All this while, its ominous tinge of dusky red had been 
deepening and darkening, until, if laid upon white paper, 
it cast the mingled hue of night and blood, strangely illu- 
minated with scintillating light, in a circle round about. 
But this peculiarity only made it the more valuable. 

Alas, the fatal ring ! When shall its dark secret be 
discovered, and the doom of ill, inherited from one pos- 
sessor to another, be finally revoked ? 

The legend now crosses the Atlantic, and comes down 
to our own immediate time. In a certain church of our 
city, not many evenings ago, there was a contribution for 
a charitable object. A fervid preacher had poured out 
his whole soul in a rich and tender discourse, which had 
at least excited the tears, and perhaps the more effectual 
sympathy, of a numerous audience. While the choristers 
sang sweetly, and the organ poured forth its melodious 



120 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

thunder, the deacons passed up and down the aisles, and 
along the galleries, presenting their mahogany boxes, in 
which each person deposited whatever sum he deemed it 
safe to lend to tlie Lord, in aid of human wretchedness. 
Charity became audible, — chink, chink, chink, — as it 
fell, drop by drop, into the common receptacle. There 
was a hum, — a stir, — the subdued bustle of people 
putting their hands into their pockets ; while, ever and 
anon, a vagrant coin fell upon the floor, and rolled away, 
with long reverberation, into some inscrutable corner. 

At length, all havhig been favored with an opportunity 
to be generous, the two deacons placed their boxes on 
the communion-table, and thence, at the conclusion of 
the services, removed them into the vestry. Here these 
good old gentlemen sat down together, to reckon the 
accumulated treasure. 

" Fie, fie. Brother Tilton," said Deacon Trott, peep- 
ing into Deacon Tilton's box, " what a heap of copper you 
have picked up ! Really, for an old man, you must have 
had a heavy job to lug it along. Copper ! copper ! cop- 
per ! Do people expect to get admittance into heaven at 
the price of a few coppers ? " 

" Don't wrong them, brother," answered Deacon Til- 
ton, a simple and kindly old man, " Copper may do more 
for one person, than gold will for another. In the gal- 
leries, where I present my box, we must not expect such 
a harvest as you gather among the gentry in the broad- 
aisle, and all over the floor of the church. My people 
are chiefly poor mechanics and laborers, sailors, seam- 
stresses, and servant-maids, with a most uncomfortable 
intermixture of roguisii school-boys." 



THE ANTIQUE RING. 121 

"Well, well," said Deacon Trott ; "but there is a 
great deal, Brother Tilton, in the method of presenting a 
contribution-box. It is a knack that comes by nature, 
or not at all." 

They now proceeded to sum up the avails of the even- 
ing, beginning with the receipts of Deacon Trott. In 
good sooth, that worthy personage had reaped an abun- 
dant harvest, in which he prided himself no less, appar- 
ently, than if every dollar had been contributed from his 
own individual pocket. Had the good deacon been 
meditating a jaunt to Texas, the treasures of the ma- 
hogany box might have sent him on his way rejoicing. 
There were bank-notes, mostly, it is true, of the smallest 
denominations in the giver's pocket-book, yet making a 
goodly average upon the whole. The most splendid con- 
tribution was a check for a hundred dollars, bearing the 
name of a distinguished merchant, whose liberality was 
duly celebrated in the newspapers of the next day. No 
less than seven half-eagles, together with an English sov- 
ereign, glittered amidst an indiscriminate heap of silver ; 
the box being polluted with nothing of the copper kind, 
except a single bright new cent, wherewith a little boy 
had performed his first charitable act. 

" Very well ! very well indeed ! " said Deacon Trott, 
self-approvingly. " A handsome evening's work ! And 
now, Brother Tilton, let 's see whether you can match it." 
Here was a sad contrast ! They poured forth Deacon Til- 
ton's treasure upon the table, and it really seemed as if 
the whole copper coinage of the country, together with 
an amazing quantity of shop-keeper's tokens, and English 
and Irish half-pence, mostly of base metal, had been 
6 



122 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

congregated into the box. There was a very substantial 
pencil-case, and the semblance of a shilling ; but the 
latter proved to be made of tin, and the former of Ger- 
man-silver. A gilded brass button was doing duty as 
a gold coin, and a folded shopbill had assumed the char- 
acter of a bank-note. But Deacon Tilton's feelings were 
much revived by the aspect of another bank-note, new and 
crisp, adorned with beautiful engravings, and stamped with 
the indubitable word. Twenty, in large black letters. 
Alas ! it was a counterfeit. In short, the poor old Dea- 
con was no less unfortunate than those who trade with 
fairies, and whose gains are sure to be transformed into 
dried leaves, pebbles, and other valuables of that kind. 

" I believe the Evil One is in the box," said he, with 
some vexation. 

" Well done, Deacon Tilton ! " cried his Brother 
Trott, with a hearty laugh. "You ought to have a 
statue in copper." 

"Never mind, brother," replied the good Deacon, 
recovering his temper. "I'll bestow ten dollars from 
my own pocket, and may heaven's blessing go along 
with it. But look ! what do you call this ? " 

Under the copper mountain, which it had cost them so 
much toil to remove, lay an antique ring ! It was en- 
riched with a diamond, which, so soon as it caught the 
light, began to twinkle and glimmer, emitting the whitest 
and purest lustre that could possibly be conceived. It 
was as brilliant as if some magician had condensed the 
brightest star in heaven into a compass fit to be set in 
a ring, for a lady's delicate finger. 

" How is this ? " said Deacon Trott, examining it care- 



THE ANTIQUE RING. 123 

fully, in tlie expectation of finding it as worthless as the 
rest of his colleague's treasure. " Why, upon my word, 
this seems to be a real diamond, and of the purest water. 
Whence could it have come ? " 

" Really, I cannot tell," quoth Deacon Tilton, " for 
my spectacles were so misty that all faces looked alike. 
But now I remember, there was a flash of light came 
from the box, at one moment ; but it seemed a dusky 
red, instead of a pure white, like the sparkle of this 
gem. Well ; the ring will make up for the copper ; but 
I wish the giver had thrown its history into the box along 
with it." 

It has been our good luck to recover a portion of that 
history. After transmitting misfortune from one pos- 
sessor to another, ever since the days of British Merlin, 
the identical ring which Queen Elizabeth gave to the 
Earl of Essex was finally thrown into the contribution- 
box of a New England church. The two deacons depos- 
ited it in the glass case of a fashionable jeweller, of 
whom it was purchased by the humble rehearser of this 
legend, in the hope that it may be allowed to sparkle on 
a fair lady's finger. Purified from the foul fiend, so long 
its inhabitant, by a deed of unostentatious charity, and 
now made the symbol of faithful and devoted love, the 
gentle bosom of its new possessor need fear no sorrow 
from its influence. 

" Very pretty ! — Beautiful ! — How original ! — How 
sweetly written ! — What nature ! — What imagination ! 
— What power ! — What pathos ! — What exquisite 
humor ! " — were the exclamations of Edward Caryl's 



124 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

kind and generous auditors, at the conclusion of the 
legend. 

" It is a pretty tale/' said Miss Pemberlon, who, con- 
scious that her praise was to that of all others as a dia- 
mond to a pebble, was therefore the less liberal in award- 
ing it. " It is really a pretty tale, and very proper for 
any of the Annuals. But, Edward, your moral does 
not satisfy me. What thought did you embody in the 
ring ? " 

" Clara, this is too bad ! " replied Edward, with 
a half-reproachful smile. " You know that I can never 
separate the idea from the symbol in which it manifests 
itself. However, we may suppose the Gem to be the 
human heart, and the Evil Spirit to be Falsehood, which, 
in one guise or another, is the fiend that causes all the 
sorrow and trouble in the world. I beseech you to let 
this suffice." . 

"It shall," said Clara, kindly. "And, believe me, 
whatever the world may say of the story, I prize it far 
above the diamond which enkindled your imagination." 




1 


i 


I 


f 



GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 

JOW talk we of graves and goblins ! Fit themes, 
— start not ! gentle reader, — fit for a ghost 
like me. Yes ; though an earth-clogged fancy 
is laboring with these conceptions, and an earthly hand 
will write them down, for mortal eyes to read, still their 
essence flows from as airy a ghost as ever basked in the 
pale starlight, at twelve o'clock. Judge them not by the 
gross and heavy form in which they now appear. They 
may be gross, indeed, with the earthly pollution con- 
tracted from the brain, through which they pass ; and 
heavy with the burden of mortal language, that crushes 
all the finer intelligences of the soul. This is ho fault of 
mine. But should aught of ethereal spirit be perceptible, 
yet scarcely so, glimmering along the dull train of words, 

— should a faint perfume breathe from the mass of clay, 

— then, gentle reader, thank the ghost, who thus embod- 
ies himself for your sake ! Will you believe me, if I say 
that all true and noble tlioughts, and elevated imagina- 
tions, are but partly the offspring of the intellect which 
seems to produce them ? Sprites, that were poets once, 
and are now all poetry, hover round the dreaming bard, 
and become his inspiration ; buried statesmen lend their 



126 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

wisdom, gathered on earth and mellowed in the grave, 
to the historian; and when the preacher rises nearest to 
the level of his mighty subject, it is because the prophets 
of old days have communed with him. Who has not 
been conscious of mysteries within his mind, mysteries 
of truth and reality, which will not wear the chains of 
language ? Mortal, then the dead were with you ! And 
thus shall the earth-dulled soul, whom I inspire, be con- 
scious of a misty brightness among his thoughts, and 
strive to make it gleam upon the page, — but all in vain. 
Poor author ! How will he despise what he can grasp, 
for the sake of the dim glory that eludes him ! 

So talk we of graves and goblins. But, what have 
ghosts to do with graves? Mortal man, wearing the 
dust which shall require a sepulchre, might deem it more 
a home and resting-place than a spirit can, whose earthly 
clod has returned to earth. Thus philosophers have 
reasoned. Yet wiser they who adhere to the ancient 
sentiment, that a phantom haunts and hallows the mar- 
ble tomb or grassy hillock where its material form was 
laid. Till purified from each stain of clay ; till the pas- 
sions of the living world are all forgotten ; till it have 
less brotherhood with the wayfarers of earth, than with 
spirits that never wore mortality, — the ghost must linger 
round the grave. O, it is a long and dreary watch to 
some of us ! 

Even in early childhood, I had selected a sweet spot, 
of shade and glimmering sunshine, for my grave. It was 
no burial-ground, but a secluded nook of virgin earth, 
where I used to sit, whole summer afternoons, dreaming 
about life and death. My fancy ripened prematurely. 



GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 127 

and taught me secrets which I could not otherwise have 
known. I pictured the coming years, — they never came 
to me, indeed ; but I pictured them like life, and made 
this spot the scene of all that should be brightest, in 
youth, manhood, and old age. There, in a little while, 
it would be time for me to breathe the bashful and burn- 
ing vows of first-love ; thither, after gathering fame 
abroad, I would return to enjoy the loud plaudit of the 
world, a vast but unobtrusive sound, like the booming 
of a distant sea ; and thither, at the far-off close of life, 
an aged man would come, to dream, as the boy was 
dreaming, and be as happy in the past as he was in fu- 
turity. Finally, when all should be finished, in that spot 
so hallowed, in that soil so impregnated with the most 
precious of my bliss, there was to be my grave. Me- 
thought it would be the sweetest grave tliat ever a mor- 
tal frame reposed in, or an ethereal spirit haunted. 
There, too, in future times, drawn thither by the spell 
which I had breathed around the place, boyhood would 
sport and dream, and youth would love, and manhood 
would enjoy, and age would dream again, and my ghost 
would watch but never frighten them. Alas, the vanity 
of mortal projects, even when they centre in the grave! 
I died in my first youth, before I had been a lover ; at a 
distance, also, from the grave which fancy had dug for 
me ; and they buried me in the thronged cemetery of a 
town, where my marble slab stands unnoticed amid a 
hundred others. And there are coffins on each side of 
mine ! 

" Alas, poor ghost ! " will the reader say. Yet I am 
a happy ghost enough, and disposed to be contented 



128 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

with my grave, if tlie sexton will but let it be my own, 
and bring no other dead man to dispute my title. Earth 
has left few stains upon me, and it will be but a short 
time that I need haunt the place. It is good to die in 
early youth. Had I lived out threescore years and ten, 
or half of them, my spirit would have been so earth- 
incrusted, that centuries might not have purified it for a 
better home than the dark precincts of the grave. Mean- 
time, there is good choice of company amongst us. From 
twilight till near sunrise, we are gliding to and fro, some 
in the graveyard, others miles away ; and would we 
speak with any friend, we do but knock against his 
tombstone, and pronounce the name engraved on it : in 
an instant, there the shadow stands ! 

Some are ghosts of considerable antiquity. There is 
an old man, hereabout ; he never had a tombstone, and is 
often puzzled to distinguish his own grave ; but here- 
abouts he haunts, and long is doomed to haunt. He 
was a miser in his lifetime, and buried a strong box of 
ill-gotten gold, almost fresh from the mint, in the coin- 
age of William and Mary. Scarcely was it safe, when 
the sexton buried the old man and his secret with him. 
I could point out the place where the treasure lies ; it 
was at the bottom of the miser's garden ; but a paved 
thoroughfare now passes beside the spot, and the corner- 
stone of a market-house presses right down upon it. Had 
the workmen dug six inches deeper, they would have 
found the hoard. Now thither must this poor old miser 
go, whether in starlight, moonshine, or pitch darkness, 
and brood above his worthless treasure, recalling all the 
petty crimes by which he gained it. Not a coin must 



GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 129 

he fail to reckon in his memory, nor forget a pennyworth 
of the sin that made up the sum, though his agony is 
such as if the pieces of gold, red-hot, were stamped into 
his naked soul. Often, while he is in torment there, he 
hears the steps of living men, who love the dross of 
earth as well as he did. May they never groan over 
their miserable wealth like him ! Night after night, for 
above a hundred years, hath he done this penance, and 
still must he do it, till the iron box be brought to light, 
and each separate coin be cleansed by grateful tears of a 
widow or an orphan. My spirit sighs for his long vigil 
at the corner of the market-house ! 

There are ghosts whom I tremble to meet, and cannot 
think of without a shudder. One has the guilt of blood 
upon him. The soul which he thrust untimely forth has 
long since been summoned from our gloomy graveyard, 
and dwells among the stars of heaven, too far and too 
high for even the recollection of mortal anguish to ascend 
thither. Not so the murderer's ghost ! It is his doom 
to spend all the hours of darkness in the spot which he 
stained with innocent blood, and to feel the hot stream — 
hot as when it first gushed upon his hand — incorporat- 
ing itself with his spiritual substance. Thus his horrible 
crime is ever fresh within him. Two other wretches are 
condemned to walk arm in arm. They were guilty lovers 
in their lives, and still, in death, must wear the guise of 
love, though hatred and loathing have become their very 
nature and existence. The pollution of their mutual sin 
remains with them, and makes their souls sick continu- 
ally. 0, that I might forget all the dark shadows 
which haunt about these graves ! This passing thought 
6* I 



130 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

of them has left a stain, and will weigh me down among 
dust and sorrow, beyond the time that my own transgres- 
sions would have kept me here. 

There is one shade among us, whose high nature it is 
good to meditate upon. He lived a patriot, and is a 
patriot still. Posterity has forgotten him. The simple 
slab, of red freestone, that bore his name, was broken 
long ago, and is now covered by the gradual accumula- 
tion of the soil. A tuft of thistles is his only monument. 
This upright spirit came to his grave, after a lengthened 
life, with so little stain of earth, that he might, abitiost 
immediately, have trodden the pathway of the sky. But 
his strong love of country chained him down, to share its 
vicissitudes of weal or woe. With such deep yearning in 
his soul,, he was unfit for heaven. That noblest virtue 
has the effect of sin, and keeps his pure and lofty spirit 
in a penance, which may not terminate till America be 
again a wilderness. Not that there is no joy for the dead 
patriot. Can he fail to experience it, while he contem- 
plates the mighty and increasing power of the land, which 
he protected in its infancy ? No ; there is much to glad- 
den him. But sometimes I dread to meet him, as he 
returns from the bedchambers of rulers and politicians, 
after diving into their secret motives, and searching out 
their aims. He looks round him with a stern and awful 
sadness, and vanishes into his neglected grave. Let 
nothing sordid or selfish defile your deeds or thoughts, 
ye great men of the day, lest ye grieve the noble dead. 

Eew ghosts take such an endearing interest as this, 
even in their own private affairs. It made me rather 
sad, at first, to find how soon the flame of love expires 



GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 131 

amid the chill damps of the tomb ; so much the sooner, 
the more fiercely it may have burned. Eorget your 
dead mistress, youth ! She has already forgotten you. 
Maiden, cease to weep for your buried lover! He will 
know nothing of your tears, nor value them if he did. 
Yet it were blasphemy to say that true love is other than 
immortal. It is an earthly passion, of which I speak, 
mingled with little that is spiritual, and must therefore 
perish with the perishing clay. When souls have loved, 
there is no falsehood or forgetfulness. Maternal affection, 
too, is strong as adamant. There are mothers here, 
among us, who might have been in heaven fifty years ago, 
if they could forbear to cherish earthly joy and sorrow, 
reflected from the bosoms of their children. Husbands 
and wives have a comfortable gift of oblivion, especially 
when secure of the faith of their living halves. Jealousy, 
it is true, will play the devil with a ghost, driving him to 
the bedside of secondary wedlock, there to scowl, unseen, 
and gibber inaudible remonstrances. Dead wives, how- 
ever jealous in their lifetime, seldom feel this posthumous 
torment so acutely. 

Many, many things, that appear most important while 
we walk the busy street, lose all their interest the mo- 
ment we are borne into the quiet graveyard which bor- 
ders it. For my own part, my spirit had not become so 
mixed up with earthly existence, as to be now held in an 
unnatural combination, or tortured much with retrospec- 
tive cares. I still love my parents and a younger sister, 
who remain among the living, and often grieve me by 
their patient sorrow for the dead. Each separate tear of 
theirs is an added weight upon my soul, and lengthens 



lo2 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

my stay among the graves. As to other matters, it 
exceedingly rejoices me, that my summons came before I 
had time to write a projected poem, which was highly im- 
aginative in conception, and could not have failed to give 
me a triumj)liant rank in the choir of our native bards. 
Nothing is so much to be deprecated as posthumous re- 
nown. It keeps the immortal spirit from the proper bliss 
of his celestial state, and causes him to feed upon the im- 
pure breath of mortal man, till sometimes he forgets that 
there are starry realms above him. Few poets — infatu- 
ated that they are ! — soar upward while the least whis- 
per of their name is heard on earth. On Sabbath even- 
ings, my sisters sit by the fireside, between our father 
and mother, and repeat some hymns of mine, which they 
have often heard from my own lips, ere the tremulous 
voice left them forever. Little do they think, those dear 
ones, that the dead stands listening in the glimmer of 
the firelight, and is almost gifted with a visible shape by 
the fond intensity of their remembrance. 

Now shall the reader know a grief of the poor ghost 
that speaks to him; a grief, but not a helpless one. 
Since I have dwelt among the graves, they bore the 
corpse of a young maiden hither, and laid her in the old 
ancestral vault, which is hollowed in the side of a grassy 
bank. It has a door of stone, with rusty iron hinges, 
and above it, a rude sculpture of the family arms, and 
inscriptions of all their names who have been buried 
there, including sire and son, mother and daughter, of an 
ancient colonial race. All of her lineage had gone before, 
and when the young maiden followed, the portal was 
closed forever. The night after her burial, when the 



GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 133 

other ghosts were flitting about their graves, forth came 
the pale virgin's shadow, with the rest, but knew not 
whither to go, nor whom to haunt, so lonesome had she 
been on earth. She stood by the ancient sepulchre, 
looking upward to the bright stars, as if she would, even 
then, begin her flight. Her sadness made me sad. That 
night and the next, I stood near her, in the moonshine, 
but dared not speak, because she seemed purer than all 
the ghosts, and fitter to converse with angels than with 
men. But the third bright eve, still gazing upward to 
the glory of the heavens, she sighed, and said, " When 
will my mother come for me ? " Her low, sweet voice 
emboldened me to speak, and she was kind and gentle, 
though so pure, and answered me again. From that 
time, always at the ghostly hour, I sought the old tomb 
of her fathers, and either found her standing by the door, 
or knocked, and she appeared. Blessed creature, that 
she was ; her chaste spirit hallowed mine, and imparted 
such a celestial buoyancy, that I longed to grasp her 
hand, and fly, — upward, aloft, aloft ! I thought, too, 
that she only lingered here, till my earthlier soul should 
be purified for heaven. One night, when the stars threw 
down the light that shadows love, I stole forth to the 
accustomed spot, and knocked, with my airy fingers, at 
her door. She answered not. Again I knocked, and 
breathed her name. Where was she? At once, the 
truth fell on my miserable spirit, and crushed it to the 
earth, among dead men's bones and mouldering dust, 
groaning in cold and desolate agony. Her penance was 
over ! She had taken her trackless flight, and had found 
a home in the purest radiance of the upper stars, leaving 



134? TALES AND SKETCHES. 

me to knock at the stone portal of the darksome sepul- 
chre. But I know — I know, that angels hurried her 
away, or surely she would have whispered ere she fled ! 

She is gone ! How could the grave imprison that 
unspotted one ! But her pure, ethereal spirit will not 
quite forget me, nor soar too high in bliss, till I ascend 
to join her. Soon, soon be that hour ! I am weary of 
tlie earth-damps ; they burden me ; they choke me ! 
Already, I can float in the moonshine ; tlie faint starlight 
will almost bear up my footsteps ; the perfume of flowers, 
which grosser spirits love, is now too earthly a luxury 
for me. Grave ! Grave ! thou art not my home. I 
must flit a little longer in thy night gloom, and then be 
gone, — far from the dust of the living and tlie dead, — 
far from the corruption that is around me, but no more 
within ! 

A few times, I have visited the chamber of one who 
walks, obscure and lonely, on his mortal pilgrimage. 
He will leave not many living friends, when he goes to 
join the dead, where his thoughts often stray, and he 
might better be. I steal into his sleep, and play my 
part among the figures of his dreams. I glide through 
the moonlight of his waking fancy, and whisper concep- 
tions, which, with a strange thrill of fear, he writes down 
as his own. I stand beside him now, at midnight, tell- 
ing these dreamy truths with a voice so dream-like, that 
he mistakes them for fictions of a brain too prone to 
such. Yet he glances behind him and shivers, while the 
lamp burns pale. Farewell, dreamer, — waking or sleep- 
ing ! Your brightest dreams are fled ; your mind grows 
too hard and cold for a spiritual guest to enter ; you are 



GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 13 J 

eartlil3% too, and have all the sins of earth. The ghost 
will visit 3'ou uo more. 

But where is the maiden, holy and pure, though wear- 
ing a form of clay, that would have me bend over her 
pillow at midnight, and leave a blessing there ? With a 
silent invocation, let her summon me. Shrink not, 
maiden, when I come ! In life, I was a high-souled 
youth, meditative, yet seldom sad, full of chaste fancies, 
and stainless from all grosser sin. And now, in death, I 
bring no loathsome smell of the grave, nor ghostly ter- 
rors, — but gentle, and soothing, and sweetly pensive 
influences. Perhaps, just fluttering for the skies, my 
visit may hallow the wellsprings of thy thought, and 
make thee heavenly here on earth. Then shall pure 
dreams and holy meditations bless thy life ; nor thy 
sainted spirit linger round the grave, but seek the upper 
stars, and meet me there ! 




DR. BULLIVANT. 




HIS person was not eminent enough, either by 
nature or circumstance, to deserve a public 
memorial simply for his own sake, after the 
lapse of a century and a half from the era in which he 
flourished. His character, in the view which we pro- 
pose to take of it, may give a species of distinctness and 
point to some remarks on the tone and composition of 
New England society, modified as it became by new 
ingredients from the eastern world, and by the attrition 
of sixty or seventy years over the rugged peculiarities of 
the original settlers. We are perhaps accustomed to 
employ too sombre a pencil in picturing the earlier times 
among the Puritans, because at our cold distance, we 
form our ideas almost wholly from their severest fea- 
tures. It is like gazing on some scenes in the land which 
we inherit from them ; we see the mountains, rising 
sternly and with frozen summits up to heaven, and the 
forests, waving in massy depths where sunshine seems a 
profanation, and we see the gray mist, like the duski- 
ness of years, shedding a chill obscurity over the whole; 
but the green and pleasant spots in the hollow of the 
hills, the warm places in the heart of what looks deso- 



DR. BULLIVANT. 137 

late, are hidden from our eyes. Still, however, a pre- 
vailing characteristic of the age was gloom, or some- 
thing which cannot be more accurate^ expressed than 
by that term, and its long shadow, falling over all the 
intervening years, is visible, though not too distinctly, 
upon ourselves. Without material detriment to a deep 
and solid happiness, the frolic of the mind was so habitu- 
ally chastened, that persons have gained a nook in his- 
tory by the mere possession of animal spirits, too exu- 
berant to be confined within the established bounds. 
Every vain jest and unprofitable word was deemed an 
item in the account of criminality, and whatever wit, or 
semblance thereof, came into existence, its birthplace 
was generally the pulpit, and its parent some sour old 
Genevan divine. The specimens of humor and satire, 
preserved in the sermons and controversial tracts of 
those days, are occasionally the apt expressions of pun- 
gent thou^its ; but oftener they are cruel torturings and 
twistings of trite ideas, disgusting by the wearisome in- 
genuity^ which constitutes their only merit. Among a 
people where so few possessed, or were allowed to exer- 
cise, the art of extracting the mirth which lies hidden 
like latent caloric in almost everything, a gay apothe- 
cary, such as Dr. BuUivant, must have been a phenome- 
non. 

We will suppose ourselves standing in Cornhill, on a 
pleasant morning of the year 1670, about the hour when 
the shutters are unclosed, and the dust swept from the 
doorsteps, and when Business rubs its eyes, and begins 
to plod sleepily through the town. The street, instead 
of running between lofty and continuous piles of brick. 



138 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

is but partially lined witli wooden buildings of various 
heights and architecture, in each of which the mercantile 
department is connected with the domicile, like the gin- 
gerbread and candy shops of an after-date. The signs 
have a singular appearance to a stranger's eye. These 
are not a barren record of names and occupations yel- 
low letters on black boards, but images and hieroglyph- 
ics, sometimes typifying the principal commodity offered 
for sale, though generally intended to give an arbi- 
trary designation to the establishment. Overlooking the 
bearded Saracens, the Indian Queens, and the wooden 
Bibles, let us direct our attention to the white post 
newly erected at the corner of the street, and sur- 
mounted by a gilded countenance which flashes in the 
early sunbeams like veritable gold. It is a bust of ^s- 
culapius, evidently of the latest London manufacture; 
and from the door behind it steams forth a mingled 
smell of musk and assafoetida and other drugs of potent 
perfume, as if an appropriate sacrifice were just laid 
upon the altar of the medical deity. I'ive or six idle 
people are already collected, peeping curiously in at the 
glittering array of gallipots and phials, and deciphering 
the labels which tell their contents in the mysterious and 
imposing nomenclature of ancient physic. They are next 
attracted by the printed advertisement of a Panacea, 
promising life but one day short of eternity, and youth 
and health commensurate. An old man, his head as 
white as snow, totters in with a hasty clattering of his 
staff, and becomes the earliest purchaser, hoping that his 
wrinkles will disappear more swiftly than they gathered. 
The Doctor (so styled by courtesy) shows the upper 



DR. BULLIVANT. 139 

half of his person behind the counter, and appears to be 
a slender and rather tall man ; his features are difficult 
to describe, possessing nothing peculiar, except a flexi- 
bility to assume all characters in turn, while his eye, 
sln-ewd, quick, and saucy, remains the same throughout. 
Whenever a customer enters the shop, if he desire a box 
of pills, he receives with them an equal number of hard, 
round, dry jokes, — or if a dose of salts, it is mingled 
with a portion of the salt of Attica, — or if some hot. 
Oriental drug, it is accompanied by a racy word or two 
that tingle on the mental palate, — all without the least 
additional cost. Then there are twistings of mouths 
which never lost their gravity before. As each pur- 
chaser retires, the spectators see a resemblance of his 
visage pass over that of the apothecary, in which all the 
ludicrous points are made most prominent, as if a magic 
looking-glass had caught the reflection, and were making 
sport with it. Unwonted titterings arise and strengthen 
into bashful laughter, but are suddenly hushed as some 
minister, heavy-eyed from his last night's vigil, or magis- 
trate, armed with the terror of the whipping-post and 
pillory, or perhaps the governor himself, goes by like a 
dark cloud intercepting the sunshine. 

About this period, many causes began to produce an 
important change on and beneath the surface of colonial 
society. The early settlers were able to keep within the 
narrowest limits of their rigid principles, because they 
had adopted them in mature life, and from their own 
deep conviction, and were strengthened in them by that 
species of enthusiasm, which is as sober and as enduring 
as reason itself. But if their immediate successors fol- 



140 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

lowed the same line of conduct, they were confined to it, 
in a great degree, by habits forced upon them, and by 
the severe rule under which they were educated, and in 
short more by restraint than by the free exercise of the 
imagination and understanding. When therefore the old 
original stock, the men who looked heavenward without 
a wandering glance to earth, had lost a part of their 
domestic and public influence, yielding to infirmity or 
death, a relaxation naturally ensued in their theory and 
practice of morals and religion, and became more evident 
with the daily decay of its most strenuous opponents. 
This gradual but sure operation was assisted by the in- 
creasing commercial importance of the colonies, whither 
a new set of emigrants followed unworthily in the track 
of the pure-hearted Pilgrims. Gain being now the allure- 
ment, and almost the only one, since dissenters no 
longer dreaded persecution at home, the people of New 
England could not remain entirely uncontaminated by 
an extensive intermixture with worldly men. The trade 
carried on by the colonists (in the face of several ineffi- 
cient acts of Parliament) with the whole maritime world, 
must have had a similar tendency ; nor are the desperate 
and dissolute visitants of the country to be forgotten 
among the agents of a moral revolution. Preebooters 
from the West Indies and the Spanish Main, — state 
criminals, implicated in the numerous plots and con- 
spiracies of the period, — felons, loaded with private 
guilt, — numbers of these took refuge in the provinces, 
where the authority of the English King was obstructed 
by a zealous spirit of independence, and where a bound- 
less wilderness enabled them to defy pursuit. Thus the 



- DR. BULLIVANT. 141 

new population, temporary and permanent, was exceed- 
ingly unlike the old, and far more apt to disseminate 
their own principles than to imbibe those of the Puritans. 
All circumstances unfavorable to virtue acquired double 
strength by the licentious reign of Charles II. ; though 
perhaps the example of the monarch and nobility was 
less likely to recommend vice to the people of New Eng- 
land than to those of any other part of the British Em- 
pire. 

The clergy and the elder magistrates manifested a 
quick sensibility to the decline of godliness, their appre- 
hensions being sharpened in this particular no less by 
a holy zeal than because their credit and iniluence were 
intimately connected with the primitive character of the 
country. A Synod, convened in the year 1679, gave 
its opinion that the iniquity of the times had drawn 
down judgments from Heaven, and proposed methods 
to assuage the Divine wrath by a renewal of former 
sanctity. But neither the increased numbers nor the 
altered spirit of the people, nor the just sense of a free- 
dom to do wrong, within certain limits, would now have 
permitted the exercise of that inquisitorial strictness, 
which had been wont to penetrate to men's firesides and 
watch their domestic life, recognizing no distinction be- 
tween private ill conduct and crimes that endanger the 
community. Accordingly, the tide of worldly principles 
encroached more and more upon the ancient landmarks, 
hitherto esteemed the outer boundaries of virtue. So- 
ciety arranged itself into two classes, marked by strong 
shades of difference, though separated by an uncertain 
line : in one were included the small and feeble rem- 



142 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

nant of the first settlers, many of their immediate de- 
scendants, the whole body of the clergy, and all whom 
a gloomy temperament, or tenderness of conscience, or 
timidity of thouglit, kept up to the strictness of their 
fathers ; the other comprehended the new emigrants, the 
gay and thoughtless natives, the favorers of Episcopacy, 
and a various mixture of liberal and enlightened men 
with most of the evil-doers and unprincipled adventurers 
in the country. A vivid and rather a pleasant idea of 
New England manners, when this change had become 
decided, is given in the journal of John Dunton, a cock- 
ney bookseller, who visited Boston and other towns of 
Massachusetts with a cargo of pious publications, suited 
to the Puritan market. Making due allowance for the 
flippancy of the writer, which may have given a livelier 
tone to his descriptions than truth precisely warrants, 
and also for his character, which led him chiefly among 
the gayer inhabitants, there still seems to have been 
many who loved the winecup and the song, and all sorts 
of delightful naughtiness. But the degeneracy of the 
times had made far less progress in the interior of the 
country than in the seaports, and until the people lost 
the elective privilege, they continued the government in 
the hands of those upright old men who had so long 
possessed their confidence. Uncontrollable events, alone, 
gave a temporary ascendency to persons of another 
stamp. James II., during the four years of his despotic 
reign, revoked the charters of the American colonies, 
arrogated the appointment of their magistrates, and 
annulled all those legal and proscriptive rights whicli 
had hitherto constituted them nearly independent states. 



DR. BULLIVANT. 143 

Among the foremost advocates of the royal usurpations 
was Dr. Biillivaiit. Gifted with a smart and ready intel- 
lect, busy and bold, he acquired great influence in the 
new government, and assisted Sir Edmund Andros, Ed- 
ward Randolph, and five or six others, to browbeat the 
council, and misrule the Northern provinces according to 
their pleasure. The strength of the popular hatred 
against this administration, the actual tyranny that was 
exercised, and the innumerable fears and jealousies, well 
grounded and fantastic, which harassed the country, may 
be best learned from a work of Increase Mather, the 
" Remarkable Providences of the Earlier Days of Amer- 
ican Colonization." The good divine (though writing 
when a lapse of nearly forty years should have tamed 
the fierceness of party animosity) speaks with the most 
bitter and angry scorn of " 'Pothecary Bullivant," who 
probably indulged his satirical propensities, from the seat 
of power, in a manner which rendered him an especial 
object of public dislike. But the people were about to 
play off a piece of practical fun on the Doctor and the 
whole of his coadjutors, and have the laugh all to them- 
selves. By the first faint rumor of the attempt of the 
Prince of Orange on the throne, the power of James 
was annihilated in the colonies, and long before the 
abduction of the latter became known, Sir Edmund An- 
dros, Governor-General of New England and New York, 
and fifty of the most obnoxious leaders of the court 
party, were tenants of a prison. We will visit our old 
acquaintance in his adversity. 

The scene now represents a room of ten feet square, 
the floor of which is sunk a yard or two below the level 



144 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

of the ground ; the walls are covered with a dirty and 
crumbling plaster, on which appear a crowd of ill-favored 
and lugubrious faces done in charcoal, and the autographs 
and poetical attempts of a long succession of debtors and 
petty criminals. Other features of the apartment are a 
deep fireplace (superfluous in the sultriness of the sum- 
mer's day), a door of hard-hearted oak, and a narrow 
window high in the wall, where the glass has long been 
broken, while the iron bars retain all their original 
strength. Through this opening come the sound of pass- 
ing footsteps in the public street, and the voices of chil- 
dren at play. The furniture consists of a bed, or rather 
an old sack of barley straw, thrown down in the corner 
farthest from the door, and a chair and table, both aged 
and infirm, and leaning against the side of the room, 
besides lending a friendly support to each other. The 
atmosphere is stifled and of an ill smell, as if it had been 
kept close prisoner for half a century, and had lost all its 
pure and elastic nature by feeding the tainted breath of 
the vicious and the sighs of the mifortunate. Such is 
the present abode of the raan of medicine and politics, 
and his own appearance forms no contrast to the accom- 
paniments. His wig is unpowdered, out of curl, and put 
on awry ; the dust of many weeks has worked its way 
into the web of his coat and small-clothes, and his knees 
and elbows peep forth to ask why they are so ill clad ; 
his stockings are ungartered, his shoes down at the heel, 
his waistcoat is without a button, and discloses a shirt 
as dingy as the remnant of snow in a showery April day. 
His shoulders have become rounder, and his whole per- 
son is more bent and drawn together, since we last saw 



DR. BULLIVANT. 145 

him, and his face has exchanged the glory of wit and 
humor for a sheepish duhiess. At intervals, the Doctor 
walks the room, with an irregular and shuffling pace; 
anon, he throws himself flat on the sack of barley straw, 
muttering very reprehensible expressions between his 
teeth ; then again he starts to his feet, and journeying 
from corner to corner, finally sinks into the chair, forget- 
ful of its three-legged infirmity till it lets him down upon 
the floor. The grated window, his only medium of inter- 
course with the world, serves but to admit additional 
vexations. Every few moments the steps of the passen- 
gers are heard to pause, and some well-known face ap- 
pears in the free sunshine behind the iron bars, brimful 
of mirth and drollery, the owner whereof stands on tiptoe 
to tickle poor Dr. Bullivant with a stinging sarcasm. 
Then laugh the little boys around the prison door, and 
the wag goes chuckHng away. The apothecary would 
fain retaliate, but all his quips and repartees, and sharp 
and facetious fancies, once so abundant, seem to have 
been transferred from himself to the sluggish brains of 
his enemies. While endeavoring to condense his whole 
intellect into one venomous point, in readiness for the 
next assailant, he is interrupted by the entrance of the 
turnkey with the prison fare of Indian bread and water. 
With these dainties we leave him. 

When the turmoil of the Revolution had subsided, and 
the authority of William and Mary was fixed on a quiet 
basis throughout the colonies, the deposed governor and 
some of his partisans were sent home to the new court, 
and the others released from imprisonment. The New- 
Englanders, as a people, are not apt to retain a revenge- 
7 J 



146 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

ful sense of injury, and nowhere, perhaps, could a poli- 
tician, however odious in his power, live more peacefully 
in his nakedness and disgrace. Dr. Bullivant returned 
to his former occupation, and spent rather a desirable old 
age. Though he sometimes hit hard with a jest, yet few 
thought of taking offence ; for whenever a man habitually 
indulges his tongue at the expense of all his associates, 
they provide against the common annoyance by tacitly 
agreeing to consider his sarcasms as null and void. Thus 
for many years, a gray old man with a stoop in his gait, 
be continued to sweep out his shop at eight o'clock in 
summer mornings, and nine in the winter, and to waste 
whole hours in idle talk and irreverent merriment, mak- 
ing it his glory to raise the laughter of silly people, and 
his delight to sneer at them in his sleeve. At length, 
one pleasant day, the door and shutters of his establish- 
ment kept closed from sunrise till sunset, and his cronies 
marvelled a moment, and passed on ; a week after, the 
rector of King's Chapel said the death-rite over Dr. 
Bullivant ; and within the month a new apothecary, and 
a new stock of drugs and medicines, made their appear- 
<ince at the gilded Head of jEsculapius. 





A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS. 

E have before us a volume of autograph letters, 
chiefly of soldiers and statesmen of the Revolu- 
tion, and addressed to a good and brave man. 
General Palmer, who himself drew his sword in the cause. 
They are profitable reading in a quiet afternoon, and in 
a mood withdrawn from too intimate relation with the 
present time ; so that we can glide backward some three 
quarters of a century, and surround ourselves with the 
ominous sublimity of circumstances that then frowned 
upon the writers. To give them their fuU effect, we 
should imagine that these letters have this moment been 
brought to town by the splashed and way-worn post- 
rider, or perhaps by an orderly dragoon, who has ridden 
in a perilous hurry to deliver his despatches. They are 
magic scrolls, if read in the right spirit. The roll of the 
.drum and the fanfare of the trumpet is latent in some of 
them ; and in others, an echo of the oratory that resounded 
in the old halls of the Continental Congress, at Philadel- 
phia ; or the words may come to us as with the living 
utterance of one of those illustrious men, speaking face 
to face, in friendly communion. Strange, that the mere 
identity of paper and ink should be so powerful. The 



148 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

same thoughts might look cold and ineffectual, in a 
printed book. Human nature craves a certain material- 
ism, and iclings pertinaciously to what is tangible, as if 
that were of more importance than the spirit accidentally 
involved in it. And, in truth, the original manuscript 
has always something which print itself must inevitably 
lose. An erasure, even a blot, a casual irregularity of 
hand, and all such little imperfections of mechanical exe- 
cution, bring us close to the writer, and perhaps convey 
some of those subtle intimations for which language has 
no shape. 

There are several letters from John Adams, written in 
A small, hasty, ungraceful hand, but earnest, and with no 
unnecessary flourish. The earhest is dated at Philadel- 
phia, September 26, 1774, about twenty days after the 
first opening of the Continental Congress. We look at 
this old yellow document, scribbled on half a sheet of 
foolscap, and ask of it many questions for which words 
have no response. We would fain know what were their 
mutual impressions, when all those venerable faces, that 
have since been traced on steel, or chiselled out of mar- 
ble, and thus made familiar to posterity, first met one 
another's gaze ! Did one spirit harmonize them, in spite 
of the dissimilitude of manners betM^een the North and 
the South, which were now for the first time brought 
into pohtical relations ? Could the Virginian descendant 
of the Cavaliers, and the New-Englander with his heredi- 
tary Puritanism, — the aristocratic Southern planter, and 
the self-made man from Massachusetts or Connecticut, — 
at once feel that they were countrymen and brothers? 
What did John Adams think of Jefferson ? — and Samuel 



A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS. 149 

Adams of Patrick Henry ? Did not North and South 
combine in their deference for the sage Erankliu, so long 
the defender of the colonies in England, and whose sci- 
entific renown was already world-wide ? And was there 
yet any whispered prophecy, any vague conjecture, circu- 
lating among the delegates, as to the desthiy which might 
be in reserve for one stately man, who sat, for the most 
part, silent among them ? — what station he was to as- 
sume in the world's history ? — and how many statues 
would repeat his form and countenance, and successively 
crumble beneath his immortality ? 

The letter before us does not answer these inquiries. 
Its main feature is the strong expression of the uncer- 
tainty and awe that pervaded even the firm hearts of the 
Old Congress, while anticipating the struggle which was 
to ensue. " The commencement of hostilities," it says, 
" is exceedingly dreaded here. It is thought that an 
attack upon the troops, even should it prove successful, 
would certainly involve the whole continent in a war. 
It is generally thought that the Ministry would rejoice at 
a rupture in Boston, because it would furnish an excuse 
to the people at home *' [this was the last time, we sus- 
pect, that John Adams spoke of England thus aifection- 
ately], " and unite them in an opinion of the necessity of 
pushing hostilities against us." 

His next letter bears on the superscription, " Favored 
by General Washington. " The date is June 20, 1775, 
three days after the battle of Bunker Hill, the news of 
which could not yet have arrived at Philadelphia. But 
the war, so much dreaded, had begun, on the quiet banks 
of Concord River ; an army of twenty thousand men was 



150 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

beleaguering Boston ; and here was Washington journey- 
ing northward to take the command. It seems to place 
us in a nearer relation with the hero, to find him perform- 
ing the little courtesy of bearing a letter between friend 
and friend, and to hold in our hands the very document 
intrusted to such a messenger. John Adams says simply, 
" We send you Generals Washington and Lee for your 
comfort"; but adds nothing in regard to the char- 
acter of the Commander-in-Chief. This letter displays 
much of the writer's ardent temperament ; if he had been 
anywhere but in the hall of Congress, it would have been 
in the intrencliment before Boston. 

" I hope," he writes, " a good account will be given of 
Gage, Haldiman, Burgoyne, Clinton, and Howe, before 
winter. Such a wretch as Howe, with a statue in honor 
of his family in Westminster Abbey, erected by the Massa- 
chusetts, to come over with the design to cut the throats 
of the Massachusetts people, is too much. I most sin- 
cerely, coolly, and devoutly wish that a lucky ball or 
bayonet may make a signal example of him, in warnhig 
to all such unprincipled, unsentimental miscreants for 
the future ! " 

He goes on in a strain that smacks somewhat of 
aristocratic feeling: "Our camp will be an illustrious 
school of military virtue, and will be resorted to and fre- 
quented, as such, by gentlemen in great numbers from 
the other colonies." The term " gentleman " has seldom 
been used in this sense subsequently to the Revolution. 
Another letter introduces us to two of these gentlemen, 
Messrs. Acquilla Hall and Josias Carvill, volunteers, who 
are recommended as " of the first families in Maryland, 
and possessing independent fortunes." 



A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS. 151 

After tlie British liad been driven out of Boston, 
Adams cries out, " Fortify, fortify ; and never let them 
get in again ! " It is agreeable enough to perceive the 
filial affection with which John Adams, and the other 
delegates from the North, regard New England, and 
especially the good old capital of the Puritans. Their 
love of country was hardly yet so diluted as to extend 
over the whole thirteen colonies, which were rather 
loolied upon as allies than as composing one nation. In 
truth, the patriotism of a citizen of the United States is 
a sentiment by itself of a peculiar nature, and requiring 
a lifetime, or at least the custom of many years, to natu- 
ralize it among the other possessions of the heart. 

The collection is enriched by a letter — dated " Cam- 
bridge, August 26, 1775" — from Washington himself. 
He wrote it in that house, — now so venerable with his 
memory, — in that very room, where his bust now stands 
upon a poet's table ; from this sheet of paper passed the 
hand that held the leading-staff ! Nothing can be more 
perfectly in keeping with all other manifestations of 
Washington than the whole visible aspect and embodi- 
ment of this letter. The manuscript is as clear as day- 
light ; the punctuation exact, to a comma. There is a 
calm accuracy throughout, which seems the production of 
a species of intelligence that cannot err, and which, if 
we may so speak, would affect us with a more human 
warmth, if we could conceive it capable of some slight 
human error. The chirography is characterized by a 
plain and easy grace, which, in the signature, is some- 
what elaborated, and becomes a type of the personal 
manner of a gentleman of the old school, but without 



153 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

detriment to the truth and clearness that disthiguish the 
rest of the manuscript. The lines are as straight and 
equidistant as if ruled ; and from beginning to end, there 
is no physical symptom — as how should there be ? — of 
a varying mood, of jets of emotion, or any of those 
fluctuating feelings that pass from the hearts into the 
fingers of common men. The paper itself (like most of 
those Revolutionary letters, which are written on fabrics 
fit to endure the burden of ponderous and earnest 
thought) is stout, and of excellent quality, and bears the 
water-mark of Britannia, surmounted by the Crown. 
The subject of the letter is a statement of reasons for not 
taking possession of Point Alderton ; a position com- 
manding the entrance of Boston Harbor. After explain- 
ing the difficulties of the case, arising from his want of 
men and munitions for the adequate defence of the lines 
which he already occupies, Washington proceeds : " To 
you, sir, who are a well-wisher to the cause, and can 
reason upon the effects of such conduct, I may open 
myself with freedom, because no improper disclosures 
will be made of our situation. But I cannot expose my 
weakness to the enemy (though I believe they are pretty 
well informed of everything that passes), by telling this 
and that man, who are daily pointing out this, and that, 
and t' other place, of all the motives that govern my 
actions ; notwithstanding I know what will be the con- 
sequence of not doing it, — namely, that I shall be ac- 
cused of inattention to the public service, and perhaps of 
want of spirit to prosecute it. But this sliall have no 
effect upon my conduct. I will steadily (as far as my 
judgment will assist me) pursue such measures as I think 



A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS. 153 

conducive to the interest of the cause, and rest satisfied 
under any obloquy that shall be thrown, conscious of 
having discharged my duty to the best of my abilities." 

The above passage, like every other passage that could 
be quoted from his pen, is characteristic of Washington, 
and entirely in keeping with the calm elevation of his 
soul. Yet how imperfect a glimpse do we obtain of him, 
through the medium of this, or any of his letters ! We 
imagine him writing calmly, with a hand that never 
falters ; his majestic face neither darkens nor gleams 
with any momentary ebullition of feeling, or irregularity 
of thought ; and thus flows forth an expression precisely 
to the extent of his purpose, no more, no less. Thus 
much we may conceive. But still we have not grasped 
the man ; we have caught no glimpse of his interior ; we 
have not detected his personality. It is the same with 
all the recorded traits of his daily life. The collection of 
them, by different observers, seems sufficiently abundant, 
and strictly harmonizes with itself, yet never brings us 
into intimate relationship with the hero, nor makes us 
feel the warmth and the human throb of his heart. 
What can be the reason ? Is it, that his great nature 
was adapted to stand in relation to his country, as man 
stands towards man, but could not individualize itself in 
brotherhood to an individual ? 

There are two from Franklin, the earliest dated, 
"London, August 8, 1767," and addressed to "Mrs. 
Franklin, at Philadelphia." He was then in England, as 
agent for the colonies in their resistance to the oppres- 
sive policy of Mr. Grenville's administration. The 
letter, however, makes no reference to poHtical or other 
7* 



154 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

business. It contains only ten or twelve lines, begin- 
ning, " My dear cliild," and conveying an impression of 
long and venerable matrimony which has lost all its 
romance, but retained a familiar and quiet tenderness. 
He speaks of making a little excursion into the country 
for his health ; mentions a larger letter, despatched by 
another vessel ; alludes with homely affability to " Mrs. 
Stevenson," " Sally," and " our dear Polly " ; desires to 
be remembered to " all inquiring friends " ; and signs 
himself, "Your ever loving husband." In this conju- 
gal epistle, brief and unimportant as it is, there are the 
elements that summon up the past, and enable us to 
create anew the man, his connections and circumstances. 
We can see the sage in his London lodgings, — with his 
wig cast aside, and replaced by a velvet cap, — penning 
this very letter ; and then can step across the Atlantic, 
and behold its reception by the elderly, but still comely 
Madam Franklin, who breaks the seal and begins to read, 
first remembering to put on her spectacles. The seal, 
by the way, is a pompous one of armorial bearings, rather 
symbolical of the dignity of the Colonial Agent, and 
Postmaster General of America, than of the humble 
origin of the Newburyport printer. The writing is in 
the free, quick style of a man witli great practice of the 
pen, and is particularly agreeable to the reader. 

Another letter from the same famous hand is ad- 
dressed to General Palmer, and dated, "Passy, October 
37, 1779." By an indorsement on the outside it appears 
to have been transmitted to the United States through 
the medium of Lafayette. Pranklin was now the am- 
bassador of his country at the Court of Versailles, enjoy- 



A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS. 155 

ing an immense celebrity, caressed by the French ladies, 
and idolized alike by the fasliionable and the learned, 
who saw something sublime and philosophic even in his 
blue yarn stockings. Still, as before, he writes with the 
homeliness and simplicity that cause a human face to 
look forth from the old, yellow sheet of paper, and in 
words that make our ears re-echo, as with the sound of 
bis long-extinct utterance. Yet this brief epistle, like 
the former, has so little of tangible matter that we are 
ashamed to copy it. 

Next, we come to the fragment of a letter by Samuel 
Adams ; an autograph more utterly devoid of ornament 
or flourish than any other in the collection. It would 
not have been characteristic, had his pen traced so much 
as a hair-line in tribute to grace, beauty, or the elabo- 
rateness of manner ; for this earnest-hearted man had 
been produced out of the past elements of his native 
land, a real Puritan, with the religion of his forefathers, 
and likewise with their principles of government, taking 
the aspect of Revolutionary politics. At heart, Samuel 
Adams was never so much a citizen of the United States, 
as he was a New-Englander, and a son of the old Bay 
Province. The following passage has much of the man 
in it: "I heartily congratulate you," he writes from 
Philadelphia, after the British have left Boston, "upon 
the sudden and important change in our aflFairs, in the 
removal of the barbarians from the capital. We owe 
our grateful acknowledgments to Him who is, as he is 
frequently styled in Sacred Writ, ' The Lord of Hosts.' 
We have not yet been informed with certainty what 
course the enemy have steered. I hope we shall be on 



156 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

our guard against future attempts. Will not care be 
taken to fortify the harbor, and thereby prevent tlic 
entrance of ships-of-war hereafter?" 

From Hancock, we have only the envelope of a docu- 
ment "on public service," directed to "The Hon, the 
Assembly, or Council of Safety of New Hampshire," 
and with the autograph affixed, that stands out so prom- 
inently in the Declaration of Independence. As seen in 
the engraving of that instrument, the signature looks 
precisely what we should expect and desire in tiie hand- 
writing of a princely merchant, whose penmanship had 
been practised in the ledger which he is represented as 
holding, in Copley's brilliant picture, but to whom his 
native ability, and the circumstances and customs of his 
country, had given a place among its rulers. But, on 
the coarse and dingy paper before us, the effect is very 
much inferior; the direction, all except the signature, is 
a scrawl, large and heavy, but not forcible; and even 
the name itself, while almost identical in its strokes with 
that of the Declaration, has a strangely different and 
more vulgar aspect. Perhaps it is all right, and typical 
of the truth. If we may trust tradition, and unpublished 
letters, and a few witnesses in print, there was quite as 
much difference between the actual man, and his his- 
torical aspect, as between the manuscript signature and 
the engraved one. One of his associates, both in politi- 
cal life and permanent renown, is said to have charac- 
terized him as a " man without a head or heart." We, 
of an after generation, should hardly be entitled, on what- 
ever evidence, to assume such ungracious liberty with a 
name that has occupied a lofty position until it has grown 



A BOOK OF AUT0C4RAPHS. 157 

almost sacred, and whicli is associated with memories 
more sacred than itself, and has thus become a valuable 
reality to our countrymen, by the aged reverence that 
clusters round about it. Nevertheless, it may be no 
impiety to regard Hancock not precisely as a real per- 
sonage, but as a majestic figure, useful and necessary in 
its way, but producing its effect far more by an orna- 
mental outside than by any intrinsic force or virtue. The 
page of all history would be half unpeopled if all such 
characters were banished from it. 

From General Warren we have a letter dated January 
14, 1775, only a few months before he attested the sin- 
cerity of his patriotism, in his own blood, on Bunker 
Hill. His handwriting has many ungraceful flourishes. 
All the small d's spout upward in parabolic curves, and 
descend at a considerable distance. His pen seems to 
have had nothing but hair-lines in it ; and the whole let- 
ter, though perfectly legible, has a look of thin and un- 
pleasant irregularity. The subject is a plan for securing 
to the colonial party the services of Colonel Gridley the 
engineer, by an appeal to his private interests. Though 
writing to General Palmer, an intimate friend, Warren 
signs himself, most ceremoniously, " Your obedient ser- 
vant." Indeed, these stately formulas in winding up a 
letter were scarcely laid aside, whatever might be the 
familiarity of intercourse : husband and wife were occa- 
sionally, on paper at least, the " obedient servants " of 
one another ; and not improbably, among well-bred peo- 
ple, there was a corresponding ceremonial of bows and 
courtesies, even in the deepest interior of domestic life. 
With all the reality that filled men's hearts, and which 



158 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

has stamped its impress on so many of these letters, it 
was a far more formal age than the present. 

It may be remarked, that Warren was almost the only 
man eminently distinguished in the intellectual phase of 
the Revolution, previous to the breaking out of the war, 
who actually uplifted his arm to do battle. The legisla- 
tive patriots were a distinct class from the patriots of the 
camp, and never laid aside the gown for the sword. It 
was very different in the great civil war of England, where 
tlie leading minds of tlie age, when argument had done 
its office, or left it undone, put on tlieir steel breast- 
plates and appeared as leaders in the field. Educated 
young men, members of the old colonial families, — gen- 
tlemen, as John Adams terms them, — seem not to have 
sought employment in the Revolutionary army, in such 
numbers as might have been expected. Respectable as 
the officers generally were, and great as were the abilities 
sometimes elicited, the intellect and cultivation of the 
country was inadequately represented in them, as a 
body. 

Turning another page, we find the frank of a letter 
from Henry Laurens, President of Congress, — him whose 
destiny it was, like so many noblemen of old, to pass be- 
neath the Traitor's Gate of the Tower of London, — him 
whose chivalrous son sacrificed as brilliant a future as 
any young American could liave looked forward to, in an 
obscure skirnl^h. Likewise, we have the address of a 
letter to Messrs. Leroy and Bayard, in the haudwriting 
of Jefferson ; too slender a material to serve as a talis- 
man for summoning up the writer ; a most unsatisfactory 
fragment, affecting us like a glimpse of the retreating 



A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS. 159 

form of the sage of Monticello, turning the distant cor- 
ner of a street. There is a scrap from Robert Morris, 
the financier ; a letter or two from Judge Jay ; and one 
from General Lincoln, written, apparently, on the gallop, 
but without any of those characteristic sparks that some- 
times fly out in a hurry, when all the leisure in the world 
would fail to elicit them. Lincoln was the type of a 
New England soldier; a man of fair abilities, not es- 
pecially of a warlike cast, without much chivalry, but 
faithful and bold, and carrying a kind of decency and 
restraint into the wild and ruthless business of arms. 

Erom good old Baron Steuben, we find, not a manuscript 
essay on the method of arranging a battle, but a commer- 
cial draft, in a small, neat hand, as plain as print, elegant 
without flourish, except a very complicated one on the 
signature. On the whole, the specimen is sufficiently 
characteristic, as well of the Baron's soldierlike and 
German simplicity, as of the polish of the Great Ereder- 
ick's aide-de-camp, a man of courts and of the world. 
How singular and picturesque an effect is produced, in 
the array of our Uevolutionary army, by the intermin- 
gling of these titled personages from the Continent of 
Europe, with feudal associations clinging about them, — 
Steuben, De Kalb, Pulaski, Lafayette ! — the German 
veteran, who had written from one famous battle-field to 
another for thirty years ; and the young Erench noble, 
who had come hither, though yet unconscious of his 
high office, to light the torch that should set fire to the 
antiquated trumpery of his native institutions. Among 
these autographs, there is one from Lafayette, written 
long after our Revolution, but while that of his own 



160 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

country was in full progress. The note is merely as 
follows : " Enclosed you will find, my dear Sir, two 
tickets for the sittings of this day. One part of the 
debate will be on the Honors of the Pantheon, agreeably 
to what has been decreed by the Constitutional Assem- 
bly."_ 

It is a pleasant and comfortable thought, that we have 
no such classic folly as is here indicated, to lay to the 
charge of our Revolutionary fathers. Both in their acts, 
and in the drapery of those acts, they were true to their 
several and simple selves, and thus left nothing behind 
them for a fastidious taste to sneer at. But it must be 
considered that our Revolution did not, like that of 
France, go so deep as to disturb the common-sense of 
the country. 

General Schuyler writes a letter, under date of Febru- 
ary 22, 1780, relating not to military affairs, from which 
the prejudices of his countrymen had almost disconnected 
him, but to the Salt Springs of Onondaga. The expres- 
sion is peculiarly direct, and the hand that of a man of 
business, free and flowing. The uncertainty, the vague, 
hearsay evidence respecting these springs, then gushing 
into dim daylight beneath the shadow of a remote wilder- 
ness, is such as might now be quoted in reference to the 
quality of the water that supplies the fountains of the 
Nile. The following sentence shows us an Indian woman 
and her son, practising their simple process in the manu- 
facture of salt, at a fire of wind-strewn boughs, the flame 
of which gleams duskily through the arches of the for- 
est : " From a variety of information, I find the smallest 
quantity made by a squaw^ with the assistance of one 



A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS. 161 

boy, with a kettle of about ten gallons' capacity, is half a 
bushel per day ; the greatest with the same kettle, about 
two bushels." It is particularly interesting to find out 
anything as to the embryo, yet stationary arts of life 
among the red people, their manufactures, their agricul- 
ture, their domestic labors. It is partly the lack of this 
knowledge — the possession of which would establish a 
ground of sympathy on the part of civilized men — that 
makes the Indian race so shadow-like and unreal to our 
conception. 

We could not select a greater contrast to the upright 
and unselfish patriot whom we have just spoken of, than 
the traitor Arnold, from whom there is a brief note, 
dated, " Crown Point, January 19, 1775," addressed to 
an officer under his command. The three lines of which 
it consists can prove bad spelling, erroneous grammar, 
and misplaced and superfluous punctuation ; but, with all 
this complication of iniquity, the ruffian General con- 
trives to express his meaning as briefly and clearly as if 
the rules of correct composition had been ever so scru- 
pulously observed. This autograph, impressed with the 
foulest name in our history, has somewhat of the interest 
that would attach to a document on which a fiend-devoted 
wretch had signed away his salvation. But there was 
not substance enough in the man — a mere cross between 
the bull-dog and the fox — to justify much feeling of any 
sort about him personally. The interest, such as it is, 
attaches but little to the man, and far more to the cir- 
cumstances amid which he acted, rendering the villany 
almost sublime, wliich, exercised in petty affairs, would 
only have been vulgar. 



162 T4LES AND SKETCHES. 

We turn anotlier leaf, and find a memorial of Hamil- 
ton. It is but a letter of introduction, addressed to 
Governor Jay in favor of Mr. Davies, of Kentucky ; but 
it gives an impression of high breeding and courtesy, as 
little to be mistaken as if we could see the writer's man- 
ner and hear his cultivated accents, while personally 
making one gentleman known to another. There is hke- 
wise a rare vigor of expression and pregnancy of mean- 
ing, such as only a man of habitual energy of thought 
could have conveyed into so commonplace a thing as an 
introductory letter. This autograph is a graceful one, 
with an easy and picturesque flourish beneath the signa- 
ture, symbolical of a courteous bow at the conclusion of 
the social ceremony so admirably performed. Hamilton 
might well be the leader and idol of the Federalists ; for 
he was pre-eminent in all the high qualities that charac- 
terized the great men of that party, and which should 
make even a Democrat feel proud that his country had 
produced such a noble old band of aristocrats ; and he 
shared all the distrust of the people, which so inevitably 
and so righteously brought about their ruin. With his 
autograph we associate that of another Federalist, his 
friend in life ; a man far narrower than Hamilton, but 
endowed with a native vigor, that caused many partisans 
to grapple to him for support ; upright, sternly inflexible, 
and of a simplicity of manner that might have befitted 
the sturdiest republican among us. In our boyhood we 
used to see a thin, severe figure of an ancient man, time- 
worn, but apparently indestructible, moving with a step 
of vigorous decay along the street, and knew him as 
"Old Tim Pickering." 



A BOOK OF AUTOGEAPHS. 165 

Side by side, too, with the autograph of Hamilton, we 
would place one from the hand that shed his blood. It 
is a few lines of Aaron Burr, written in 1823 ; when all 
his ambitious schemes, whatever they once were, had 
been so long shattered that even the fragments had crum- 
bled away, leaving him to exert his withered energies on 
petty law cases, to one of which the present note refers. 
The hand is a little tremulous with age, yet small and 
fastidiously elegant, as became a man who was in the 
habit of writing billet-doux on scented note-paper, as well 
as documents of war and state. This is to us a deeply 
interesting autograph. Remembering what has been 
said of the power of Burr's personal influence, his art to 
tempt men, his might to subdue them, and the fascination 
that enabled him, though cold at heart, to win the love 
of woman, we gaze at this production of his pen as into 
his own inscrutable eyes, seeking for the mystery of his 
nature. How singular that a character imperfect, ruined, 
blasted, as this man's was, excites a stronger interest 
than if it had reached the highest earthly perfection of 
which its original elements would admit ! It is by the 
diabolical part of Burr's character that he produces his 
effect on the imagination. Had he been a better man, 
we doubt, after all, whether the present age would not 
already have suffered him to wax dusty, and fade out of 
sight, among the mere respectable mediocrities of his 
own epoch. But, certainly, he was a strange, wild off- 
shoot to have sprung from the united stock of those two 
singular Christians, President Burr of Princeton College, 
and Jonatlian Edwards ! 

Omitting many, we have come almost to the end of 



164? TALES AND SKETCHES. 

these memorials of liistorical men. We observe one 
other autograph of a distinguished soldier of the Revolu- 
tion, Henry Knox, but written in 1791, when he was 
Secretary of War. In its physical aspect, it is well 
worthy to be a soldier's letter. The hand is large, round, 
and legible at a glance ; the lines far apart, and accurately 
equidistant ; and the whole affair looks not unlike a com- 
pany of regular troops in marching order. The signa- 
ture has a point-like firmness and simplicity. It is a 
curious observation, sustained by these autographs, 
though we know not how generally correct, that South- 
ern gentlemen are more addicted to a flourish of the pen 
beneath their names, than those of the North. 

And now we come to the men of a later generation, 
whose active life reaches almost within the verge of pres- 
ent affairs ; people of dignity, no doubt, but whose char- 
acters have not acquired, either from time or circumstan- 
ces, the interest that can make their autographs valuable 
to any but the collector. Those whom we have hitherto 
noticed were the men of an heroic age. They are de- 
parted, and now so utterly departed, as not even to touch 
upon the passing generation through the medium of per- 
sons still in life, who can claim to have known them famil- 
iarly. Their letters, therefore, come to us hke material 
things out of the hands of mighty shadows, long histori- 
cal, and traditionary, and fit companions for the sages 
and warriors of a thousand years ago. In spite of the 
proverb, it is not in a single day, or in a very few years, 
that a man can be reckoned " as dead as Julius Caesar." 
We feel little interest in scraps from the pens of old 
gentlemen, ambassadors, governors, senators, heads of 



A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS. 165 

departments, even presidents though tliey were, who 
lived lives of praiseworthy respectability, and whose pow- 
dered heads and black knee-breeches have but just van- 
ished out of the drawing-room. Still less do we value 
the blotted paper of those whose reputations are dusty, 
not with oblivious time, but with present political tur- 
moil and newspaper vogue. Really great men, however, 
seem, as to their effect on the imagination, to take their 
place amongst past worthies, even while walking in the 
very sunshine that illuminates the autumnal day in which 
we write. We look, not without curiosity, at the small, 
neat hand of Henry Clay, who, as he remarks with his 
habitual deference to the wishes of the fair, responds to 
a young lady's request for his seal ; and we dwell longer 
over the torn-off conclusion of a note from Mr. Calhoun, 
whose words are strangely dashed off without letters, 
and whose name, were it less illustrious, would be unrec- 
ognizable in his own autograph. But of all hands that 
can still grasp a pen, we know not the one, belonging to 
a soldier or a statesman, which could interest us more 
than the hand that wrote the following : " Sir, your 
note of the 6th inst. is received. I hasten to answer 
that there was no man ' in the station of colonel, by the 
name of J. T. Smith,' under my command, at the battle 
of New Orleans ; and am, respectfully. 

Yours, Andrew Jackson. 

Oct. 19th, 1833." 

The old general, we suspect, has been insnared by a 
pardonable little stratagem on the part of the autograph 
collector. The battle of New Orleans would hardly have 



166 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

beeu won, without better aid than this problematical 
Colonel J. T. Smith. 

Intermixed with and appended to these historical auto- 
graphs, there are a few literary ones. Thnothy Dwight 
— the " old Timotheus " who sang the Conquest of Ca- 
naan, instead of choosing a more popular subject, in the 
British Conquest of Canada — is of eldest date. Colonel 
Trumbull, whose hand, at various epochs of his life, was 
familiar with sword, pen, and pencil, contributes two 
letters, which lack the picturesqueness of execution that 
should distinguish the chirography of an artist. The 
value of Trumbull's pictures is of the same nature with 
that of daguerreotypes, depending not upon the ideal but 
the actual. The beautiful signature of Washington Irv- 
ing appears as the indorsement of a draft, dated in 1814, 
when, if we may take this document as evidence, his in- 
dividuality seems to have been merged into the firm of 
" P. E. Irving & Co." Never was anything less mer- 
cantile than this autograph, though as legible as the 
writing of a bank-clerk. Without apparently aiming at 
artistic beauty, it has all the Sketch Book in it. We find 
the signature and seal of Pierpont, the latter stamped 
with the poet's almost living countenance. What a 
pleasant device for a seal is one's own face, which he 
may thus multiply at pleasure, and send letters to his 
friends, — the Head without, and the Heart within ! 
There are a few lines in the school-girl hand of Margaret 
Davidson, at nine years old ; and a scrap of a letter from 
Washington Allston, a gentle and delicate autograph, in 
which we catch a glimpse of thanks to his correspondent 
for the loan of a volume of poetry. Nothing remains, 



A BOOK OF AUTOGRAPHS. 167 

save a letter from Noah Webster, whose early toils were 
niauifested iu a spelliug-book, and those of his later age 
ill a ponderous dictionary. Under date of February 10, 
1843, he writes in a sturdy, awkward hand, very fit for 
a lexicographer, an epistle of old man's reminiscences, 
from which we extract the following anecdote of Wash- 
ington, presenting the patriot in a festive light : — 

"When I was travelling to the South, in the year 
1785, I called on General Washington at Mount Vernon. 
At dinner, the last course of dishes was a species of pan- 
cakes, which were handed round to each guest, accom- 
panied with a bowl of sugar and another of molasses 
for seasoning them, that each guest might suit himself. 
When the dish came to me, I pushed by me the bowl 
of molasses, observing to the gentlemen present, that I 
had enough of that in my own country. The General 
burst out with a loud laugh, a thing very unusual with 
him. *Ali,' said he, 'there is nothing in that story 
about your eating molasses in New England.' There 
was a gentleman from Maryland at the table ; and the 
General immediately told a story, stating that, during the 
Revolution, a hogshead of molasses was stove in, in West 
Chester, by the oversetting of a wagon ; and a body of 
Maryland troops being near, the soldiers ran hastily, and 
saved all they could by filling their hats or caps with 
molasses." 

There are said to be temperaments endowed with sym- 
pathies so exquisite, that, by merely handling an auto- 
graph, they can detect the writer's character with un- 
erring accuracy, and read his inmost heart as easily as a 
less-gifted eye would peruse the written page. Our faith 



168 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

in this power, be it a spiritual one, or only a refinement 
of the physical nature, is not unlimited, in spite of evi- 
dence. God has imparted to the human soul a marvel- 
lous strength in guarding its secrets, and he keeps at 
least the deepest and most inward record for his own 
perusal. But if there be such sympathies as we have 
alluded to, in how many instances would History be put 
to the blush by a volume of autograph letters, like this 
which we now close ! 




AN OLD WOMAN'S TALE. 



ill 

ill 



N the house where I was born, there used to be 
an old woman crouching all day long over the 
kitchen fire, with her elbows on her knees and 
her feet in the aslies. Once in a while she took a turn 
at the spit, and she never lacked a coarse gray stocking 
in her lap, the foot about half finished ; it tapered away 
with her own waning life, and she knit the toe-stitch on 
the day of her death. She made it her serious business 
and sole amusement to tell me stories at any time from 
morning till night, in a mumbling, toothless voice, as I 
sat on a log of wood, grasping her check-apron in both 
my hands. Her personal memory included the better 
part of a hundred years, and she had strangely jumbled 
her own experience and observation with those of many 
old people who died in her young days; so that she 
might have been taken for a contemporary of Queen 
Elizabeth, or of John Kogers in the Primer. There are 
a thousand of her traditions lurking in the corners and 
by-places of my mind, some more marvellous than what 
is to follow, some less so, and a few not marvellous in 
the least, all of which I should like to repeat, if I were 
as happy as she in having a listener. But I am humble 
8 



170 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

enough to own, that I do not deserve a listener half so 
well as that old toothless woman, whose narratives pos- 
sessed an excellence attributable neither to herself, nor 
to any single individual. Her ground-plots, seldom with- 
in the widest scope of probability, were filled up with 
homely and natural incidents, the gradual accretions of 
u long course of years, and fiction hid its grotesque ex- 
travagance in this garb of truth, like the Devil (an ap- 
propriate simile, for the old woman supplies it) disguising 
himself, cloven-foot and all, in mortal attire. These tales 
generally referred to her birthplace, a village in the 
valley of the Connecticut, the aspect of which she im- 
pressed with great vividness on my fancy. The houses 
in that tract of country, long a wild and dangerous fron- 
tier, were rendered defensible by a strength of architect 
ture that has preserved many of them till our own times, 
and I cannot describe the sort of pleasure with which, 
two summers since, I rode through the little town in 
question, while one object after another rose familiarly 
to my eye, like successive portions of a dream becoming 
realized. Among other things equally probable, she was 
wont to assert that all the inhabitants of this village (at 
certain intervals, but whether of twenty-five or fifty years, 
or a whole century, remained a disputable point) were 
subject to a simultaneous slumber, continuing one hour's 
space. When that mysterious time arrived, the parson 
snored over his half-written sermon, though it were Sat- 
urday night and no provision made for the morrow, — 
the mother's eyelids closed as she bent over her infant, 
and no childish cry awakened, — the watcher at the bed 
of mortal sickness slumbered upon the death-pillow, — 



AN OLD WOMAN'S TALE. 171 

and-' the dying man anticipated his sleep of ages by one 
as deep and dreamless. To speak emphatically, there 
was a soporific influence throughout the village, stronger 
than if every mother's son and daughter were reading a 
dull story ; notwithstanding which the old woman pro- 
fessed to hold the substance of the ensuing account from 
one of those principally concerned in it. 

One moonlight summer evening, a young man and a 
girl sat down together in the open air. They were dis- 
tant relatives, sprung from a stock once wealthy, but 
of late years so poverty-stricken, that David had not a 
penny to pay the marriage fee, if Esther should consent 
to wed. The seat they had chosen was in an open grove 
of elm and walnut trees, at a right angle of the road ; 
a spring of diamond water just bubbled into the moon- 
light beside them, and then whimpered away through the 
bushes and long grass, in search of a neighboring mill- 
stream. The nearest house (situate within twenty yards 
of them, and the residence of their great-grandfather in 
his lifetime) was a venerable old edifice, crowned with 
many high and narrow peaks, all overrun by innumerable 
creeping plants, which hung curling about the roof like 
a nice young wig on an elderly gentleman's head. Op- 
posite to this establishment was a tavern, with a well 
and horse-trough before it, and a low green bank run- 
ning along the left side of the door. Thence, the road 
went onward, curving scarce perceptibly, through the 
village, divided in the midst by a narrow lane of verd- 
ure, and bounded on each side by a grassy strip of twice 
its own breadth. The houses had generally an odd look. 
Here, the moonlight tried to get a glimpse of one, a 



172 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

rough old heap of ponderous timber, which, ashamed of 
its dilapidated aspect, was hiding behind a great thick 
tree ; the lower story of the next had sunk almost under 
ground, as if the poor little house were a-weary of the 
world, and retiring into the seclusion of its own cellar; 
farther on stood one of the few recent structures, thrust- 
ing its painted face conspicuously into the street, with 
an evident idea that it was the fairest thing there. 
About midway in the village was a grist-mill, partly 
concealed by the descent of the ground towards the 
stream which turned its wheel. At the southern ex- 
tremity, just so far distant that the window-panes daz- 
zled into each other, rose the meeting-house, a dingy 
old barnlike building, with an enormously dispropor- 
tioned steeple sticking up straight into heaven, as high 
as the Tower of Babel, and the cause of nearly as much 
confusion in its day. This steeple, it must be under- 
stood, was an afterthought, and its addition to the main 
edifice, when the latter had already begun to decay, had 
excited a vehement quarrel, and almost a schism in the 
church, some fifty years before. Here the road wound 
down a hill and was seen no more, the remotest object 
in view being the graveyard gate, beyond the meeting- 
house. The youthful pair sat hand in hand beneath the 
trees, and for several moments they had not spoken, be- 
cause the breeze was hushed, the brook scarce tinkled, 
the leaves had ceased their rustUng, and everything lay 
motionless and silent as if Nature were composing her- 
self to slumber. 

" What a beautiful night it is, Esther ! " remarked 
David, somewhat drowsily. 



AN OLD WOMAN'S TALE. 173 

" Very beautiful," answered the girl, in the same tone. 

"But how still ! " continued David. 

" Ah, too still ! " said Esther, with a faint shudder, 
like a modest leaf when the wind kisses it. 

Perhaps they fell asleep together, and, united as their 
spirits were by close and tender sympathies, the same 
strange dream might have wrapped them in its shadowy 
arms. But they conceived, at the time, that they still 
remained wakeful by the spring of bubbling water, look- 
ing down through the village, and all along the moon- 
liglited road, and at the queer old houses, and at the 
trees which thrust their great twisted branches almost 
into the windows. There was only a sort of mistiness 
over their minds like the smoky air of an early autumn 
night. At length, without any vivid astonishment, they 
became conscious that a great many people were either 
entering the village or already in the street, but whether 
they came from the meeting-house, or from a little be- 
yond it, or where the devil they came from, was more 
than could be determined. Certainly, a crowd of people 
seemed to be there, men, women, and children, all of 
whom were yawning and rubbing their eyes, stretching 
their limbs, and staggering from side to side of the road, 
as if but partially awakened from a sound slumber. 
Sometimes they stood stock-still, with their hands over 
their brows to shade their sight from the moonbeams. 
As they drew near, most of their countenances appeared 
familiar to Esther and David, possessing the peculiar 
features of famiUes in the village, and that general air 
and aspect by which a person would recognize his own 
townsmen in the remotest ends of the earth. But thousrh 



174 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

the whole multitude might have been taken, in the mass, 
for neighbors and acquaintances, there was not a single 
individual whose exact likeness they had ever before 
seen. It was a noticeable circumstance, also, that the 
newest fashioned garment on the backs of these people 
might have been worn by the great-grandparents of the 
existing generation. There was one figure behind all 
the rest, and not yet near enough to be perfectly dis- 
tinguished. 

"Where on earth, David, do all these odd people 
come from ? " said Esther, with a lazy inclination to 
laugh. 

" Nowhere on earth, Esther," replied David, unknow- 
ing why he said so. 

As they spoke, the strangers showed some symptoms 
of disquietude, and looked towards the fountain for an 
instant, but immediately appeared to assume their own 
trains of thought and previous purposes. They now 
separated to different parts of the village, with a readi- 
ness that implied intimate local knowledge, and it may 
be worthy of remark, that, though they were evidently 
loquacious among themselves, neither their footsteps nor 
their voices reached the ears of the beholders. Wher- 
ever there was a venerable old liouse, of fifty years' 
standing and upwards, surrounded by its elm or walnut 
trees, with its dark and weather-beaten barn, its well, 
its orchard and stone-walls, all ancient and all in good 
repair around' it, there a little group of these people 
assembled. Such parties were mostly composed of an 
aged man and woman, with the younger members of a 
family ; their faces were full of joy, so deep that it as- 



AN OLD WOMAN'S TALE. 175 

sumed the shade of melancboly; they pointed to each 
other the minutest objects about the homesteads, things 
in their hearts, and were now comparing them with the 
originals. But where hollow places by the wayside, 
grass-grown and uneven, with unsightly chimneys rising 
ruinous in the midst, gave indications of a fallen dwelling 
and of hearths long cold, there did a few of the strangers 
sit them down on the mouldering beams, and on the yel- 
low moss that had overspread the door-stone. The men 
folded their arms, sad and speechless ; the women wrung 
their hands with a more vivid expression of grief; and 
the little children tottered to their knees, shrinking away 
from the open grave of domestic love. And wlierever a 
recent edifice reared its white and flashy front on the 
foundation of an old one, there a gray-haired man might 
be seen to shake his staff in anger at it, while his aged 
dame and their offspring appeared to join in their male- 
dictions, forming a fearful picture in the ghostly moon- 
light. While th'^se scenes were passing, the one figure 
in the rear of all the rest was descending the liollow 
towards the mill, and the eyes of David and Esther were 
drawn thence to a pair with whom they could fully sym- 
pathize. It was a youth in a sailor's dress and a pale 
slender maiden, who met each other with a sweet em- 
brace in the middle of the street. 

"How long it must be since they parted," observed 
David. 

" Fifty years at least," said Esther. 

They continued to gaze with unwondering calmness 
and quiet interest, as the dream (if such it were) un- 
rolled its quaint and motley semblance before them, and 



176 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

tlieir notice was now attracted by several little knots of 
people apparently engaged in conversation. Of these 
one of the earliest collected and most characteristic was 
near the tavern, the persons who composed it being 
seated on the low green bank along the left side of the 
door. A conspicuous figure here was a fine corpulent 
old fellow in his shirt-sleeves and flame-colored breeches, 
and with a stained white apron over his paunch, beneath 
which he held his hands and wherewith at times he wiped 
his ruddy face. The stately decrepitude of one of his 
companions, the scar of an Indian tomahawk on his 
crown, and especially his worn buff-coat, were appro- 
priate marks of a veteran belonging to an old Provincial 
garrison, now deaf to the roll-call. Another showed his 
rough face under a tarry hat and wore a pair of wide 
trousers, like an ancient mariner who had tossed away 
his youth upon the sea, and was returned, hoary and 
weather-beaten, to his inland home. There was also a thin 
young man, carelessly dressed, who ever and anon cast a 
sad look towards the pale maiden above mentioned. With 
these there sat a hunter, and one or two others, and they 
were soon joined by a miller, who came upward from the 
dusty mill, his coat as white as if besprinkled with pow- 
dered starlight. All these (by the aid of jests, which 
might indeed be old, but had not been recently repeated) 
waxed very merry, and it was rather strange, that just 
as their sides shook- with the heartiest laughter, they 
appeared greatly like a group of shadows flickering in 
the moonshine. Four personages, very different from 
these, stood in front of the large house with its periwig 
of creeping plants. One was a little elderly figure, dis- 



AN OLD WOMAN'S TALE. 177 

tiiiguislied by the gold on his three-cornered hat and 
skj-blue coat, and by the seal of arms annexed to his 
great gold watch-chain ; his air and aspect befitted a Jus- 
tice of Peace and County Major, and all earth's pride 
and pomposity were squeezed into this small gentleman 
of five feet high. The next in importance was a grave 
person of sixty or seventy years, whose black suit and 
band sufficiently indicated his character, and the polished 
baldness of whose head was worthy of a famous preacher 
in the village, half a century before, who had made wigs 
a subject of pulpit denunciation. The two other figures, 
both clad in dark gray, showed the sobriety of Deacons ; 
one was ridiculously tall and thin, like a man of ordinary 
bulk infinitely produced, as the mathematicians say; 
while the brevity and thickness of his colleague seemed 
a compression of the same man. These four talked with 
great earnestness, and their gestures intimated that they 
had revived the ancient dispute about the meeting-house 
steeple. The grave person in black spoke with com- 
posed solemnity, as if he were addressing a Synod ; the 
short deacon grunted out occasional sentences, as brief 
as himself; his tall brother drew the long thread of his 
argument through the whole discussion, and (reasoning 
from analogy) his voice must indubitably have been small 
and squeaking. But the little old man in gold-lace was 
evidently scorched by his own red-hot eloquence; he 
bounced from one to another, shook his cane at the 
steeple, at the two deacons, and almost in the parson's 
face, stamping with his foot fiercely enough to break a 
hole through the very earth; though, indeed, it could 
not exactly be said that the green grass bent beneath 
8* L 



178 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

him. The figure, noticed as coming behind all the rest, 
had now surmounted the ascent from the mill, and 
proved to be an elderly lady with something in her 
hand, 

" Why does she walk so slow ? " asked David. 

" Don't you see she is lame ? " said Esther. 

This gentlewoman, whose infirmity had kept her so 
far in the rear of the crowd, now came hobbling on, 
glided unobserved by the polemic group, and paused on 
the left brink of the fountain, within a few feet of the 
two spectators. She was a magnificent old dame, as 
ever mortal eye beheld. Her spangled shoes and gold- 
clocked stockings shone gloriously within the spacious 
circle of a red hoop-petticoat, which swelled to the very 
point of explosion, and was bedecked all over with em- 
broidery a little tarnished. Above the petticoat, and 
parting in front so as to display it to the best advantage, 
was a figured blue damask gown. A wide and stiff ruff 
encircled her neck, a cap of the finest muslin, though 
rather dingy, covered her head, and her nose was be- 
stridden by a pair of gold-bowed spectacles with enor- 
mous glasses. But the old lady's face was pinched, 
sharp and sallow, wearing a niggardly and avaricious 
expression, and forming an odd contrast to the splendor 
of her attire, as did likewise the implement which she 
held in her hand. It was a sort of iron shovel (by 
liousewives termed a " slice "), such as is used in clearing 
the oven, and with this, selecting a spot between a 
walnut-tree and the fountain, the good dame made an 
earnest attempt to dig. The tender sods, however, pos- 
sessed a strange impenetrability. They resisted her 



AN OLD WOMAN'S TALE. 179 

efforts like a quarry of liviug granite, and losing lier 
breath, she cast down the shovel and seemed to bemoan 
herself most piteously, gnashing her teeth (what few she 
had) and wringing her thin yellow hands. Then, appar- 
ently with new hope, she resumed her toil, which still 
had the same result, — a circumstance the less surprising 
to David and Esther, because at times they would catch 
the moonlight shining through the old woman, and dan- 
cing in the fountain beyond. The little man in gold- 
lace now happened to see her, and made his approach on 
tiptoe. 

" How hard this elderly lady works ! " remarked 
David. 

" Go and help her, David," said Esther, compassion- 
ately. 

As their drowsy voices spoke, both the old woman and 
the pompous little figure behind her lifted their eyes, and 
for a moment they regarded the youth and damsel with 
something like kindness and affection ; which, however, 
were dim and uncertain, and passed away almost imme- 
diately. The old woman again betook herself to the 
shovel, but was startled by a hand suddenly laid upon 
her shoulder ; she turned round in great trepidation, and 
beheld the dignitary in the blue coat ; then followed an 
embrace of such closeness as would indicate no remoter 
connection than matrimony between these two decorous 
persons. The gentleman next pointed to the shovel, ap- 
pearing to inquire the purpose of his lady's occupation ; 
while she as evidently parried his interrogatories, main- 
taining a demure and sanctified visage as every good 
woman ought, in similar cases. Howbeit, she could not 



180 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

forbear looking askew, behiud lier spectacles, towards the 
spot of stubborn turf. All the while, their figures had a 
strangeness in them, and it seemed as if some cunning 
jeweller had made their golden ornaments of the yellow- 
est of the setting sunbeams, and that the blue of their 
garments was brought from the dark sky near the moon, 
and that the gentleman's silk waistcoat was the bright 
side of a fiery cloud, and the lady's scarlet petticoat a 
remnant of the blush of morning, — and that they both 
were two unrealities of colored air. But now there was 
a sudden movement throughout the multitude. The 
Squire drew forth a watch as large as the dial on the 
famous steeple, looked at the warning hands and got hi in 
gone, nor could his lady tarry ; the party at the tavern 
door took to their heels, headed by the fat man in the 
flaming breeches ; the tall deacon stalked away imme- 
diately, and the short deacon waddled after, making four 
steps to the yard; the mothers called their children 
about them and set forth, with a gentle and sad glance 
behind. Like cloudy fantasies that hurry by a viewless 
impulse from the sky, they all were fled, and the wind 
rose up and followed them with a strange moaning down 
the lonely street. Now whither these people went, is 
more than may be told; only David and Esther seemed 
to see the shadowy splendor of the ancient dame, as she 
lingered in the irfbonshine at the graveyard gate, gazing 
backward to the fountain. 

" O Esther ! I. have had such a dream ! " cried David, 
starting up, and rubbing his eyes. 

" And I such another ! " answered Esther, gaping till 
her pretty red lips formed a circle. 



AN OLD WOxMAN'S TALE. 181 

"About an old woman with gold-bowed spectacles," 
continued David. 

" And a scarlet hoop-petticoat," added Esther. They 
now stared in each other's eyes, with great astonishment 
and some little fear. After a thoughtful moment or two, 
David drew a long breath and stood upright. 

" If I live till to-morrow morning," said he, " I '11 see 
what may be buried between that tree and the spring of 
water." 

" And why not to-night, David ? " asked Esther ; for 
she was a sensible little girl, and bethought herself that 
the matter might as well be done in secrecy. 

David felt the propriety of the remark and looked 
round for the means of following her advice. The moon 
shone brightly on something tiiat rested against the side 
of the old house, and, on a nearer view, it proved to be 
an iron shovel, bearing a singular resemblance to that 
which they had seen in their dreams. He used it with 
better success than the old woman, the soil giving way 
so freely to his efforts, that he had soon scooped a hole 
as large as the basin of the spring. Suddenly, he poked 
his head down to the very bottom of this cavity. " Oho ! 
— what have we here ? " cried David. 




^,-^^ ■ VerKTj^^^.. " ^^ /V^ ^ 7^;^ «5 — Jiiki: 



TIME'S PORTRAITURE. 

Being the Carrier's Address to the Patrons of "The Salem 
Gazette " for the 1st of January, 1838. 



ADDRESS. 




IND PATRONS : — "We newspaper carriers are 
Time's errand-boys ; and all the year round, 
the old gentleman sends us from one of your 
doors to another, to let you know what he is talking 
about and what he is doing. We are a strange set of 
urchins ; for, punctually on New Year's morning, one 
and all of us are seized with a fit of rhyme, and break 
forth in such hideous strains, that it would be no won- 
der if the infant Year, with her step upon the threshold, 
were frightened away by the discord with which we 
strive to welcome her. On these occasions, most gen- 
erous patrons, you never fail to give us a taste of your 
bounty ; but whether as a reward for our verses, or to 
purchase a respite from further infliction of them, is best 
known to your worshipful selves. Moreover, we, Time's 
errand-boys as aforesaid, feel it incumbent upon us, on 
the first day of every year, to present a sort of summary 
of our master's dealings with the world, throughout the 



TIME'S POETllAITURE. 183 

whole of the preceding twelvemonth. Now it has so 
chanced by a misfortune heretofore unheard of, that I, 
your present petitioner, have been altogetlier forgotten by 
the Muse. Instead of being able (as I naturally expected) 
to measure my ideas into six-foot lines, and tack a rhyme 
at each of their tails, I find myself, this blessed morning, 
the same simple proser that I was yesterday, and shall 
probably be to-morrow. And to my further mortifica- 
tion, being a humble-minded little sinner, I feel nowise 
capable of talking to your worships with the customary 
wisdom of my brethren, and giving sage opinions as to 
what Time has done right, and what he has done wrong, 
and what of right or wrong he means to do hereafter. 
Such being my unhappy predicament, it is with no small 
confusion of face, that I make bold to present myself at 
your doors. Yet it were surely a pity that my non-ap- 
pearance should defeat your bountiful designs for the 
replenishing of my pockets. Wherefore I have bethought 
me, that it might not displease your worships to hear a 
few particulars about the person and habits of Father 
Time, with whom, as being one of his errand-boys, I 
have more acquaintance than most lads of my years. 

For a great many years past, there has been a wood- 
cut on the cover of the " Farmer's Almanac," pretending 
to be a portrait of Father Time. It represents that 
respectable personage as almost in a state of nudity, 
with a single lock of hair on his forehead, wings on his 
slioulders, and accoutred with a scythe and an hour-glass. 
These two latter symbols appear to betoken that the old 
fellow works in haying time, by the hour. But, within 
my recollection, Time has never carried a scythe and an 



184 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

hour-glass, nor worn a pair of wings, nor shown himself 
in the half-nalved condition that the ahnanac would make 
us believe. Nowadays, he is the most fashionably dressed 
figure about town ; and I take it to be his natural dis- 
position, old as he is, to adopt every fashion of the 
day and of the hour. Just at the present period, you 
may meet him in a furred surtout, with pantaloons 
strapped under his narrow-toed boots ; on his head, in- 
stead of a single forelock, he wears a smart auburn wig, 
with bushy whiskers of the same hue, the whole sur- 
mounted by a German-lustre hat. He has exchanged 
his hour-glass for a gold patent-lever watch, which he 
carries in his vest-pocket ; and as for his scythe, he has 
either thrown it aside altogether, or converted its handle 
into a cane not much stouter than a riding-switch. If 
you stare him full in the face, you will perhaps detect a 
few wrinkles ; but, on a hasty glance, you might suppose 
him to be in the very heyday of life, as fresh as he was 
in the garden of Eden, So much for the present aspect 
of Time ; but I by no means insure that the description 
shall suit him a month hence, or even at this hour to- 
morrow. 

It is another very common mistake, to suppose that 
Time wanders among old ruins, and sits on mouldering 
walls and moss-grown stones, meditating about matters 
which everybody else has forgotten. Some people, per- 
haps, would expect to find him at the burial-ground in 
Broad Street, poring over the half-illegible inscriptions 
on the tombs of the Higginsons, the Hathornes,* the 

* Not " Hawthorne," as one of the present representatives 
of the family has seen fit to transmogrify a good old name. 



TIME'S PORTRAITURE. 185 

Holyokes, the Brownes, the Olivers, the Pickmans, the 
Pickerings, and other worthies, with whom he kept 
company of old. Some would look for him on the ridge 
of Gallows Hill, where, in one of his darkest moods, he 
and Cotton Mather hung the witches. But they need 
not seek him there. Time is invariably the first to for- 
get his own deeds, his own history, and his own former 
associates. His place is in the busiest bustle of the 
world. If you would meet Time face to face, you have 
only to promenade in Essex Street, between the hours 
of twelve and one ; and there, among beaux and belles, 
you will see old Father Time, apparently the gayest of 
the gay. He walks arm in arm with the young men, 
talking about balls and theatres, and afternoon rides, and 
midnight merry-makings ; he recommends such and such 
a fashionable tailor, and sneers at every garment of six 
months' antiquity ; and, generally, before parting, he in- 
vites his friends to drink champagne, — a wine in which 
Time delights, on account of its rapid effervescence. And 
Time treads hghtly beside the fair girls, whispering to 
them (the old deceiver !) that they are the sweetest an- 
gels he ever was acquainted with. He tells them that 
they have nothing to do but dance and sing, and twine 
roses in their hair, and gather a train of lovers, and that 
the world will always be like an illuminated ball-room. 
And Time goes to the Commercial News-Room, and 
visits the insurance-offices, and stands at the corner of 
Essex and St. Peter's Streets, talking with the merchants 

However, Time seldom has occasion to mention the gentle- 
man's name, so that it is no great matter how he spells or 
pi'onounces it. 



186 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

about the arrival of ships, the rise and fall of stocks, the 
price of cotton and breadstuffs, the prospects of the 
whaling-business, and the cod-fishery, and all other news 
of the day. And the young gentlemen, and the pretty 
girls, and the merchants, and all others with whom he 
makes acquaintance, are apt to think that there is no- 
body like Time, and that Time is all in all. 

But Time is not near so good a fellow as they take 
him for. He is continually on the watch for mischief, 
and often seizes a sly opportunity to lay his cane over 
the shoulders of some middle-aged gentleman; and lo 
and behold ! the poor man's back is bent, his hair turns 
gray, and his face looks like a shrivelled apple. This is 
what is meant by being " time-stricken." It is the worst 
feature in Time's character, that he always inflicts the 
greatest injuries on his oldest friends. Yet, shamefully 
as he treats them, they evince no desire to cut his ac- 
quaintance, and can seldom bear to think of a final sep- 
aration. 

Again, there is a very prevalent idea, that Time loves 
to sit by the fireside, telling stories of the Puritans, the 
witch persecutors, and the heroes of the old Trench war 
and the Revolution ; and that he has no memory for any- 
thing more recent than the days of the first President 
Adams. This is another great mistake. Time is so 
eager to talk of novelties, that he never fails to give 
circulation to the most incredible rumors of the day, 
though at the hazard of being compelled to eat his own 
words to-morrow. He shows numberless instances of 
this propensity while the national elections are in pro- 
gress. A month ago, his mouth was full of the wonder- 



TIME'S PORTRAITURE. 187 

ful Whig victories ; and to do him justice, he really seems 
to have told the truth for once. Whether the same story 
will hold good another year, we must leave Time himself 
to show. He has a good deal to say, at the present 
juncture, concerning the revolutionary movements in 
Canada; he blusters a little about the northeastern 
boundary question; he expresses great impatience at 
the sluggishness of our commanders in the Florida war ; 
he gets considerably excited whenever the subject of 
abolition is brought forward, and so much the more, as 
he appears hardly to have made up his mind on one side 
or the other. Whenever this happens to be the case, — 
as it often does, — Time works himself into such a rage, 
that you would think he were going to tear the universe 
to pieces ; but I never yet knew him to proceed, in good 
earnest, to such terrible extremities. During the last 
six or seven months, he has been seized with intolerable 
sulkiness at the slightest mention of the currency; for 
nothing vexes Time so much as to be refused cash upon 
the nail. The above are the chief topics of general inter- 
est which Time is just now in the habit of discussing. 
For his more private gossip, he has rumors of new 
matches, of old ones broken oif, with now and then a 
whisper of good-natured scandal; sometimes, too, he 
condescends to criticise a sermon, or a lyceum lecture, 
or performance of the glee-club ; and, to be brief, catch 
the volatile essence of present talk and transitory opin- 
ions, and you will have Time's gossip, word for word. 
I may as well add, that he expresses great approbation 
of Mr. Russell's vocal abilities, and means to be present 
from beginning to end of his next concert. It is not 



188 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

every singer that could keeii Time with his voice and in- 
strument, for a whole evening. 

Perhaps you will inquire, " What are Time's literary 
tastes ? " And here again there is a general mistake. It 
is conceived by many, that Time spends his leisure hours 
at the Athenaeum, turning over the musty leaves of those 
large worm-eaten folios, which nobody else has disturbed 
since the death of the venerable Dr. Oliver. So far 
from this being the case. Time's profoundest studies are 
the new novels from Messrs. Ives and Jewett's Circulat- 
ing Library. He skims over the lighter articles in the 
periodicals of the day, glances at the newspapers, and 
then throws them aside forever, all except " The Salem 
Gazette," of which he preserves a file, for his amusement 
a century or two hence. 

We will now consider Time as a man of business. In 
this capacity, our citizens are in the habit of complaining, 
not wholly without reason, that Time is sluggish and 
dull. You may see him occasionally at the end of Derby 
Wharf, leaning against a post, or sitting on the breech 
of an iron cannon, staring listlessly at an unrigged East- 
Indiaman. Or, if you look through the windows of the 
Union Marine Insurance Office, you may get a ghmpse 
of him there, nodding over a newspaper, among the old 
weather-beaten sea-captains who recollect when Time 
was quite a different sort of fellow. If you enter any of 
the dry-goods stores along Essex Street, you will be 
likely to find him with his elbows on the counter, bar- 
gaining for a yard of tape or a paper of pins. To catch 
him in his idlest mood, you must visit the office of some 
young lawyer. Still, however. Time does contrive to do 



TIME'S PORTRAITURE. 189 

a little business among us, and should not be denied the 
credit of it. During the past season, he lias worked 
pretty diligently upon the railroad, and promises to start 
the cars by the middle of next summer. Then we may 
fly from Essex Street to State Street, and be back again 
before Time misses us. In conjunction with our worthy 
mayor (with whose ancestor, the Lord Mayor of London, 
Time was well acquainted more than two hundred years 
ago) he has laid the corner-stone of a new city hall, the 
granite front of which is already an ornament to Court 
Street. But besides these public affairs. Time busies 
himself a good deal in private. Just at this season of 
the year, he is engaged in collecting bills, and may be 
seen at almost any hour peregrinating from street to 
street, and knocking at half the doors in town, with a 
great bundle of these infernal documents. On such er- 
rands he appears in the likeness of an undersized, portly 
old gentleman, with gray hair, a bluff red face, and a 
loud tone of voice ; and many people mistake him for 
the penny-post. 

Never does a marriage take place, but Time is present 
among the wedding-guests ; for marriage is an affair in 
which Time takes more interest than in almost any other. 
He generally gives away the bride, and leads the bride- 
groom by the hand to the threshold of the bridal cham- 
ber. Although Time pretends to be very merry on these 
occasions, yet, if you watch him well, you may often de- 
tect a sigh. Whenever a babe is born into this weary 
world. Time is in attendance, and receives the wailing 
infant in his arms. And the poor babe shudders in- 
stinctively at his embrace, and sets up a feeble cry. 



190 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

Then again, from the birth-chamber, he must hurry to 
the bedside of some old acquaintance, whose business 
with Time is ended forever, though their accounts re- 
main to be settled at a future day. It is terrible, some- 
times, to perceive the lingering reluctance, the shivering 
agony, with which the poor souls bid Time farewell, if 
they have gained no other friend to supply the gray 
deceiver's place. How do they chug to Time, and steal 
another and yet another glance at his familiar aspect ! 
But Time, the hard-hearted old fellow! goes through 
such scenes with infinite composure, and dismisses his 
best friends from memory the moment they are out of 
sight. Others, who have not been too intimate with 
Time, as knowing him to be a dangerous character, and 
apt to ruin his associates, — these take leave of him with 
joy, and pass away with a look of triumph on their fea- 
tures. They know, that, in spite of all his flattering 
promises, he could not make them happy, but that now 
they shall be so, long after Time is dead and buried. 

For Time is not immortal. Time must die, and be 
buried in the deep grave of eternity. And let him die. 
From the hour when he passed forth through the gate 
of Eden, till this very moment, he has gone to and fro 
about the earth, staining his hands with blood, commit- 
ing crimes innumerable, and bringing misery on himself 
and all mankind. Sometimes he has been a pagan; 
sometimes a persecutor. Sometimes he has spent centu- 
ries in darkness, where he could neither read nor write. 
These were called the Dark Ages. There has hardly 
been a single year, when he has not stirred up strife 
among the nations. Sometimes, as in France less than 



TIME'S PORTRAITURE. 191 

fifty years ago, he has been seized with fits of frenzy, 
and murdered thousands of innocent people at noonday. 
He pretends, indeed, that he has grown wiser and better 
now. Trust him who will; for my part, I rejoice that 
Time shall not live forever. He hath an appointed office 
to perform. Let him do his task, and die. Eresh and 
young as he would make himself appear, he is already 
hoary with age; and the very garments that he wears 
about the town were put on thousands of years ago, and 
have been patched and pieced to suit the present fashion. 
There is nothing new in him nor about him. Were he 
to die while I am speaking, we could not pronounce it 
an untimely death. Methinks, with his heavy heart and 
weary brain, Time should himself be glad to die. 

Meanwhile, gentle patrons, as Time has brought round 
another New Year, pray remember your poor petitioner. 
Por so small a lad, you will agree that I talk pretty pas- 
sably well, and have fairly earned whatever spare specie 
Time has left in your pockets. Be kind to me ; and I have 
good hope that Time will be kind to you. After all the 
hard things which I have said about him, he is really, — 
that is, if you take him for neither more nor less than he 
is worth, and use him as not abusing him, — Time is 
really a very tolerable old fellow, and may be endured 
for a little while that we are to keep him company. Be 
generous, kind patrons, to Time's errand-boy. So may 
he bring to the merchant his ship safe from the Indies ; 
to the lawyer, a goodly number of new suits ; to the 
doctor, a crowd of patients with the dyspepsia and fat 
purses ; to the farmer, a golden crop and a ready market ; 
to the mechanic, steady employment and good wages ; 



192 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

to the idle gentleman, some liouest business ; to tlie 
rich, kind hearts and liberal hands ; to the poor, warm 
firesides and food enough, patient spirits, and the hope 
of better days ; to our country, a return of specie pay- 
ments ; and to you, sweet maid, the youth who stole 
into your dream last night ! And next New Year's Day 
(if I find nothing better to do in the mean while) may 
Time again bring to your doors your loving little friend. 

The Carrier. 




BROWNE'S FOLLY." 




The Wayside, August 28, 1860. 

Y DEAR COUSIN : — I should be very glad to 
write a story, as you request, for the benefit of 
the Essex Listitute, or for any other purpose 
that might be deemed desirable by my native towns- 
people. But it is now many years since the epoch of 
the " Twice-Told Tales," and the " Mosses from an Old 
Manse " ; and my mind seems to have lost the plan aud 
measure of those little narratives, in which it was once 
so unprofitably fertile. I can write no story, therefore ; 
but (rather than be entirely wanting to the occasion) I 
will endeavor to describe a spot near Salem, on which 
it was once my purpose to locate such a dreamy fiction 
as you now demand of me. 

It is no other than that conspicuous hill (I really 
know not whether it lies in Salem, Danvers, or Beverly) 
which used in ray younger days to be known by the 
name of "Browne's Eolly." This eminence is a long 
ridge rising out of the level country around, like a 
whale's back out of a calm sea, with the head and tail 
beneath the surface. Along its base ran a green and 
seldom-trodden lane, with which I was very familiar in 



194 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

my boyhood ; and there was a little brook, which I re- 
member to liave dammed up till its overflow made a 
mimic ocean. When I last looked for this tiny stream- 
let, which was still rippling freshly through my memory, 
I found it strangely shrunken ; a mere ditch indeed, and 
almost a dry one. But the green lane was still there, 
precisely as I remembered it ; two wheel-tracks, and the 
beaten path of the horses' feet, and grassy strips be- 
tween ; the whole overshadowed by tall locust-trees, and 
the prevalent barberry -bushes, which are rooted so fondly 
into the recollections of every Essex man. 

Trom this lane there is a steep ascent up the side of 
the hill, the ridge of which affords two vicAvs of very 
wide extent and variety. On one side is the ocean, and 
Salem and Beverly on its shores ; on the other a rural 
scene, almost perfectly level, so that each man's metes 
and bounds can be traced out as on a map. The be- 
holder takes in at a glance the estates on Avhich difi'erent 
families have long been situated, and the houses where 
they have dwelt, and cherished their various interests, 
intermarrying, agreeing together, or quarrelling, going 
to live, annexing little bits of real estate, acting out their 
petty parts in life, and sleeping quietly under the sod 
at last. A man's individual affairs look not so very 
important, when we can climb high enough to get the 
idea of a complicated neighborhood. 

But what made the hill particularly interesting to me, 
were the traces of an old and long-vanished edifice, mid- 
way on the curving ridge, and at its highest point. A 
pre-revolutionary magnate, the representative of a famous 
old Salem family, had here built himself a pleasure- 



"BROWNE'S FOLLY," 195 

house, on a scale of magnificence, wliich, combined with 
its airy site and difficult approach, obtained for it and 
for the entire hill on which it stood, the traditionary title 
of " Browne's Folly." Whether a folly or no, tlie house 
was certainly an unfortunate one. While still in its 
glory, it was so tremendously shaken by the earthquake 
of 1755 that the owner dared no longer reside in it; and 
practically acknowledging that its ambitious site ren- 
dered it indeed a Folly, he proceeded to locate it on 
humbler ground. The great house actually took up its 
march along the dechning ridge of the hill, and came 
safely to the bottom, where it stood till within the mem- 
ory of men now alive. 

The proprietor, meanwhile, had adhered to the Roy- 
alist side, and fled to England during the Revolution. 
The mansion was left under the care of Richard Derby 
(an ancestor of the present Derby family), wlio had a 
claim to the Browne property through his wife, but 
seems to have held the premises precisely as the refugee 
left them, for a long term of years, in the expectation of 
his eventual return. The house remained, witli all its 
furniture in its spacious rooms and chambers, ready for 
tlie exile's occupancy, as soon as he should reappear. 
As time went on, however, it began to be neglected, and 
was accessible to whatever vagrant, or idle school-boy, 
or berrying party might choose to enter through its ill- 
secured windows. 

But there was one closet in the house, which every- 
body was afraid to enter, it being supposed that an evil 
spirit — perhaps a domestic Demon of the Browne fam- 
ily — was confined in it. One day, three or four score 



196 TALES AND SKETCHES. 

years ago, some school-boys happened to be playing in 
the deserted chambers, and took it into their heads to 
develop the secrets of this mysterious closet. With great 
difficulty and tremor they succeeded in forcing the door. 
As it flew open, there was a vision of people in garments 
of antique magnificence, — gentlemen in curled wigs and 
tarnished gold-lace, and ladies in brocade and quaint 
head-dresses, rushing tumultuously forth and tumbhng 
upon the floor. The urchins took to their heels, in huge 
dismay, but crept back, after a while, and discovered that 
the apparition was composed of a mighty pile of family 
portraits. I had the story, the better part of a hundred 
years afterwards, from the very school-boy who pried 
open the closet door. 

After standing many years at the foot of the hill, the 
house was again removed in three portions, and was fash- 
ioned into three separate dwellings, which, for aught I 
know, are yet extant in Danvers. 

The ancient site of this proud mansion may still be 
traced (or could have been ten years ago) upon the sum- 
mit of the hill. It consisted of two spacious wings, con- 
nected by an intermediate hall of entrance, which fronted 
lengthwise upon the ridge. Two shallow and grass - 
grown cavities remain, of what were once the deep and 
richly stored cellars under the two wings ; and between 
them is the outline of the connecting hall, about as deep 
as a plough furrow, and somewhat greener than the sur- 
rounding sod. The two cellars are still deep enough to 
shelter a visitor from the fresh breezes tliat haunt the 
summit of the hill ; and barberry-bushes clustering with- 
in them offer the harsh acidity of their fruits, instead of 



"BROWNE'S FOLLY." 197 

tlie rich wines ■which the colonial magnate was wont to 
•store there for his guests. There I have sometimes sat 
and tried to rebuild, in my imagination, the stately house, 
or to fancy what a splendid show it must have made 
even so far off as in the streets of Salem, when the old 
proprietor illuminated his many windows to celebrate the 
King's birthday. 

I have quite forgotten what story I once purposed 
writing about "Browne's Folly," and I freely offer the 
theme and site to any of my young townsmen, who may 
be afflicted with the same tendency towards fanciful nar- 
ratives -which haunted me in my youth and long after- 
wards Truly yours, 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. 




UN 23 1904 




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